School of Earth and Environment
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Bradley Parrish Dr Bradley Parrish

Visiting Research Fellow

Email address: b.d.parrish@leeds.ac.uk

Link to personal page

Biography

Dr. Bradley Parrish's research focuses on the transformation, innovation, and development of human organizations and organizing systems, particularly with regards to the need for humans to make a living in ways that are supportive of social-ecological life support systems. Specifically, he explores the processes in which actors establish new, more sustainable, systems of knowledge and practices in the face of cognitive, institutional, and political pressures to conform to extant practices. This includes research on entrepreneurship and enterprise development, social learning, intervention theory, and regional development policy and governance.

Bradley completed an interdisciplinary Ph.D. in Environmental Social Science at the University of Leeds, and has previous degrees in Applied Economics and Business Management from Cornell University (B.S.) and Natural Resource and Environmental Policy from the State University of New York's College of Environmental Science and Forestry (M.S.).

He has professional experience working in government in New York State and Washington, DC, and enterprise development experience in North and East Africa. As a member of the School of Earth and Environment, Bradley co-designed and delivers an innovative, experiential module for final-year students to learn the knowledge and skills of environmental entrepreneurship. He also teaches "Tools and Techniques for Business, Environment, and Corporate Responsibility" for undergraduate students, and "Introduction to Sustainability" for masters students.

Research Interests

Bradley uses critical realist and human ecology meta-perspectives for approaching interdisciplinary research, grounded in organization theory, ecological economics, and development studies. His methodological approach emphasizes rigorous, theoretically-driven small 'n' research to examine the sociocultural and economic dimensions of knowing, organizing, innovating, and transforming human activities.

Bradley's research has involved fieldwork in North America, Europe, East Africa, and Asia-Pacific. His most recent contributions are in establishing theoretical and empirical bases for studying the emergence of sustainability-driven entrepreneurship and enterprise. Previously, he studied market-driven interventions in the Tanzanian coffee industry to explore the implications of new international trade structures, organizational innovations, and resource dependency on sustainable livelihoods of small-scale producers.

Presently, Bradley is involved in a number of collaborations to investigate facilitated processes of social learning, organizational innovations, and regional transformation for sustainable regional development. One of these focuses on China's development policy aimed at establishing home-grown, 'harmonious' entrepreneurs and enterprises. Another focuses on the challenges confronting Southeast Asia's agricultural institutions and organizations with respect to food security and livelihood security in the face of unprecedented population growth, urbanization, and climate change. Bradley is also participating in theoretical collaborations focused on integrating concepts of power, ethics, and values into theories of social-ecological system adaptive capacity, vulnerability, and resilience.

Areas of interest include:

  • Social, environmental, and sustainability entrepreneurship and enterprise

  • Organizational sustainability and corporate responsibility

  • Trade, development, and environmental change

  • Social learning, knowledge systems, and intervention theory

  • Social-ecological system resilience, vulnerability, and adaptive capacity

  • Ecosystem services and poverty reduction

  • Transitions to sustainable regional economies

Bradley completed an interdisciplinary Ph.D. in Environmental Social Science at the University of Leeds, and has previous degrees in Applied Economics and Business Management from Cornell University (B.S.) and Natural Resource and Environmental Policy from the State University of New York's College of Environmental Science and Forestry (M.S.). His doctoral thesis identified the unique design logics used by sustainability-driven entrepreneurs to build enterprises that successfully use earned income business models to improve and sustain the quality of human and natural resources.

Bradley has professional experience working in government in New York State and Washington, DC, and small enterprise development in North and East Africa. As a member of the School of Earth and Environment, he co-designed and delivers the 'Environmental Enterprise Project', an innovative module for final-year students to learn the knowledge and skills of environmental entrepreneurship. He also teaches 'Tools and Techniques for Business, Environment, and Corporate Responsibility' for undergraduate students, and 'Introduction to Sustainability' for masters students. He is a co-founder of the Onesa Institute International, which works to support grassroots, entrepreneurial approaches to sustainable development.

Publications