Simonetta Manfredi

Simonetta Manfredi is a professor of equality and diversity management, and the director of research, innovation and enterprise at Oxford Brookes University. She works closely with the University’s Pro-Vice Chancellor for Research and Global Partnerships to provide leadership for the implementation of strategies, policies and to support activities that underpin the university’s ambitions for Research & Innovation as set out in the R&I Pillar of the 2035 Strategy.

Simonetta works closely with the Associate Directors on the strategic development of university-wide policies relating to research support and governance, KE and impact and entrepreneurship. She represents and promotes the university research, innovation and entrepreneurship community and its activities regionally, nationally and internationally and engages in forums related to policy development at regional, national and international levels.

Her research interests and expertise are primarily focused on gender and leadership, age discrimination, work-life balance, and applied diversity policy research in the Higher Education sector. She has published widely in these areas, and co-authored Managing Equality and Diversity, published by Oxford University Press. She has led several projects funded by a range of organisations which include the European Commission, former Government Departments, Research Councils and Advance-Higher Education. These included a project funded by the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, under its Inclusion Matters Programme, to increase the representation of women researchers in STEM as founders of university spinout companies. 

imonetta is regularly invited to speak at academic and practitioner conferences and has published a series of blogs and opinion pieces for a number of media outlets. She is currently part of a project funded by Horizon to promote gender equality in European Universities with a focus on increasing women’s participation in spinouts leadership.