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Professor Pitsis is a globally renowned expert in the strategic design and management of complex and high-risk projects. These projects range from Olympic infrastructure, deep tech quantum computing. Most recently, he is working on AI agent adoption and trust and its role in decision-making under extremely volatile conditions. He is an ideal person to speak on making the impossible possible, and the strategic and managerial constraints and opportunities of engaging and investing in high-risk, but high-reward, projects.

He is the recipient of several awards for his research. Most recently, he and his co-authors were Finalists for the 2025 Responsible Research in Management Award, co-sponsored by the Academy of Management Fellows Group and the Community for Responsible Research in Business and Management (RRBM) at The Academy of Management Annual Conference for their research on ColaLife, a temporary organisation that successfully eradicated childhood mortality due to diarrhoea in Zambia. Other awards have included the Emerald Science Citation of Excellence and the Paper of the Year Award (Human Relations).

He has published in several FT50 and other highly regarded academic and practitioner journals (including Academy of Management Learning and Education, Organization Science, Organization Studies, Long Range Planning, Journal of Management Studies, Human Relations, California Management Review, and Management Learning, amongst others). He is also a co-author of critically acclaimed and best-selling texts in management and innovation.

He has appeared on the radio (ABC) and television (BBC), in addition to podcasts in the UK and the USA. He has also provided strategic advice and leadership development for several major projects and organisations, including the Royal Air Force (Plan Astra), Royal Australian Air Force (Air Force Improvement Program), Reserve Bank of Australia, Reserve Bank of India, Commonwealth Bank of Australia, BorgWarner (Sevcon), TNT, KONNE, just to name a few.

Natalie is a self-confessed pracademic. Her entire career has been in the pursuit of helping organisations get value from their technology investments. She started hacking code before it was fashionable, and climbed the slippery pole of technical and project leadership. She is now an Associate Professor of Practice at UQBS, conducting industry research and executive education on all things digital, data and AI governance and serves as a board member of UnitingCare Queensland and Queensland Treasury Corporation. Previously, Natalie was a partner in Deloitte’s Risk Advisory practice, was seconded as Chief Delivery Officer role for eHealth Queensland, and has been an inaugural member of several digital committees, including the National AI Centre Thinktank on Responsible AI.

Paul is a Professor of Strategic Management. His research and teaching focus on how organisations plan for the future and make strategic decisions, helping us to understand how individual behaviour can create meaningful change to the organisation and the people connected to it. Paul’s work cuts across sectors, including high-growth startups, emergency services, health care providers, reinsurance, telecommunication and the petrochemical industry.

Research interests

Paul’s research is grounded in industry and professional practice. He pursues multiple research programs.

Transitioning the energy sector: Paul’s research investigates how organisations plan and coordinate the shift to cleaner energy, examining how the coordination across an industry value chain can make the energy transition more effective for industries, communities and society.

Coordinating responses in the face of extreme weather events: Paul’s work examines enablers and barriers to effective governance needed to coordinate organisational responses to tackle extreme weather events and improve community disaster resilience.

Mechanisms to support creating and scaling startups: Paul’s research explores mechanisms that support creating and scaling high-impact startups.

Effective strategizing: Paul’s research places a particular emphasis on exploring the influence of communication on formulation and execution on the effective delivery of strategy and its impact on the organization and its stakeholders.

Research expertise

Paul is an award-winning, internationally recognised scholar, pioneering new research programs on strategy-as-practice, practice-based institutionalism and routine dynamics; advancing the fields of Strategic Management and Organization Theory.

His research featured in world-leading outlets, including the Academy of Management Journal, Journal of Management Studies, Journal of Business Ethics, Organization Science and Organization Studies, and prestigious handbooks.

Paul's work received several prestigious awards from leading national and international learned professional associations, including the Academy of Management, European Group for Organizational Studies and Australian Centre for Entrepreneurship Research Excellence.

The practical relevance of Paul’s work is demonstrated by industry publications and media.

Fostering strategic management competence

Paul is a leading educator in Strategic Management. He integrates a broad portfolio of cross‑sector research into the design and delivery of evidence‑based strategic management courses, contributing to prestigious programs including the MBA and the Bachelor of Advanced Business (hons). Previously, he designed and delivered the strategic management curriculum to the Master of Business and the Bachelor of Business Management (hons).

To foster strategic management competence to professionals interested in short form credentials, Paul offers a short course ‘Think and Act Strategically’ through UQ’s Executive Education and contributes to the UQ-Oxford Executive Leadership Program; having equipped up-and-coming medical professionals graduating from UQ’s Medical Leadership Program.

Leadership

Paul fosters a thoughtful, inclusive, and collaborative culture within UQ and the academic community, creating environments in which diverse perspectives and constructive intellectual engagement can thrive.

Roles at UQ include

• Establish and lead the Practice and Process Studies research hub
• Department head, Strategy & Entrepreneurship discipline
• Member of the Tenure and Promotions Committee for the Faculty of Business, Economics & Law
• Member of the Business School’s Research Committee

Roles in the academic profession included

• Senior Editor, Organization Studies (2014-2025)
• Editorial board memberships for leading international journals in strategic management, Long Range Planning, Organization Research Methods, Organization Studies, Research in the Sociology of Organizations
• Executive Leadership Track, leading the Strategizing, Activities & Practices interest group at the Academy of Management, including Program Chair
• Award Committees, such as Chair of the Career Achievement Award, Academy of Management

Corinne seeks to understand the organizing practices and processes that gradually and invisibly create risks that can worsen over time to become catastrophic. These ‘insidious risks’ were the focus of Corinne’s PhD in the UQ Business School where she identified three ways, on a spectrum of ways these risks are managed: blinkered, law-abiding and attentive. With more than 30 years’ experience in the mining sector, government, consulting and research, Corinne built upon her earth sciences background in mine rehabilitation and closure to become a qualitative researcher through her PhD. This provided a new lens and insights on how organisations manage elongated insidious risks, not only for mine affected water and land disturbance in mining but also during the progressive failure of the insurance market for extreme weather, in her postdoctoral research. In a voluntary capacity Corinne formed and led an ISO standards working group to finalise ISO 24419 Managing Mining Legacies in 2023 providing the first international standard on this topic together with case studies and a bibliography. She represents AusIMM in her standards work. Since 2019 Corinne has been a Board Member of the Victorian Government’s Mine Land Rehabilitation Authority providing oversight for three brown coal mine closures in the Latrobe Valley. Prior to her PhD Corinne developed the field of research in managing abandoned/legacy mines in the Centre for Mined Land Rehabilitation, SMI following her Churchill Fellowship research in 2009.

Frederik is an Associate Professor in Strategy and Entrepreneurship and the Program Convenor of the Master of Entrepreneurship and Innovation at UQ Business School. His research and teaching focus on how business opportunities emerge and how organizations from early-stage start-ups to mature enterprises can identify and seize such opportunities. A large share of Frederik’s current research investigates specifically how crises and digital technologies create opportunities for entrepreneurship and innovation. He works closely with companies from small start-ups to large ASX listed enterprises and has successfully helped many of them with research-based evidence and innovation facilitation.

Prior to joining UQ Business School, Frederik was a Senior Research Fellow at QUT Business School and responsible for managing the collaborative research program with Woolworths Ltd. He received his PhD from City University of Hong Kong for his work on business accelerators and high-tech start-ups. Before joining City University, he was a business intelligence consultant at Hewlett-Packard and a customer relationship management specialist at IBM.

Dr Thea Voogt is an Associate Professor in the School of Law and the Director of Business Law.

She specialises in income tax law, agriculture tax policy tools, the impact of climate change on the financial fortitude of farming families, corporate governance and business structures.

Thea leverages her significant business experience in senior executive roles and her background as a chartered accountant in industry projects. She holds a Doctorate in Financial Management and Master of International Commercial Law (UQ).

Thea is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and an award-winning law teacher. She is the 2017 recipient of the prestigious UQ Business, Economics & Law Faculty Teaching Award and a joint recipient of the 2022 Business, Economics & Law Faculty Award for Excellence in Citizenship (Innovation). She also received the 2017 Inspired Me to Learn Award for Teaching Excellence in an undergraduate compulsory course, and the 2016 Award for Teaching Excellence in an undergraduate compulsory course from the UQ School of Law.

Thea is an academic member of the UQ Law School Pro Bono Centre and a member of the Pro Bono Centre Regional Rural Remote Steering Committee. She is also an independent member of the Management Committees of Rural Financial Counselling Services North Queensland and Farm Business Planning North Queensland.

Prior to joining UQ, Thea was the CEO (Principal Officer) of the superannuation funds of the University of Johannesburg, a Professor in Accounting and managed large tenders for this institution. Over the course of her career in South Africa, she was closely involved with the South African Institute of Chartered Accountants as sought-after speaker, researcher and umpire for the national qualifying exams for chartered accountants. Thea also held a Ministerial appointment to the Board of the South African Qualifications Authority (SAQA).

Associate Professor Stephanie Wyeth is a academic within the Urban Planning Program, and Director of Engagement for the School of Architecture, Design and Planning.

Stephanie is an experienced urban and social planning practitioner with significant research, project and leadership experience in the public and private sectors. She joined The University of Queensland in 2019 following several years as a Director with a multidisciplinary planning and design firm, where she led projects focussed on complex social, urban planning and development issues. Her motivation for joining academia is a belief that a values-led and practice intensive university experience is critical if the next generation of urban planning professionals are to be equipped with the skills, knowledge and mindsets to lead, sustained positive change in our cities, towns and communities.

As a pracademic, Stephanie seeks to bridge the theory – practice divide, by promoting the exchange of knowledge, ideas and capabilities across university, industry and community. She regularly facilitates and brokers opportunities for the university’s world-leading researchers to share their expertise with government and community for projects with a strong public interest focus. Stephanie is regularly invited to join advisory forums and judging panels, and to speak at industry and community events.

Between 2016 – 2022 Stephanie served as a Non-Executive Director on the Board of the South Bank Corporation. In 2020 she was appointed a Fellow of the Planning Institute of Australia for services to the profession. Her most recent panel appointments include Logan Urban Design Awards, Lord Mayor’s Business Awards (Brisbane), and an advisory committee for a national design project.

Memberships

• Planning Institute of Australia
• Committee for Brisbane

Teaching Responsibilities

PLAN1000 The Planning Challenge (Course Coordinator and Lecturer – 2019 to date)

PLAN1100 Foundational Ideas in Planning (Course Coordinator and Lecturer – 2019 to 2024)

PLAN4001/PLAN7120 Citymaking: Theory and Practice (Course Coordinator and Lecturer – 2020-2022)

PLAN4100 Advanced Planning Practice (Course Coordinator and Lecturer – 2021 to date)

PLAN4130 | PLAN7130 Planning Industry Placements (Course Coordinator and Lecturer – 2019 to February 2025 (Semesters 1, 2 and Summer)

ADPS3300 | ADPS7300 Industry Placement (Course Coordinator and Lecturer - 2025 to date)

ENVM3103 Regulatory Frameworks for Environmental Management and Planning (Guest lecturer 2021-2023)

Various guest lectures providing insights into urban planning, employability and professional practice.

Student supervision for PHD, Honours and research projects

Awards

2025 Industry Engagement Award - Faculty of Engineering, Architecture and Information Technology

2025 Research Award - Citizen Science - Faculty of Engineering, Architecture and Information Technology

2022 Teaching Award - Planning Program, School of Earth and Environmental Sciences

2022 Staff Award, Organisation of Planning Students

Service and Engagement

Director of Engagement – School of Architecture, Design and Planning (2023 to date)

Academic Advisor for Bachelor of Urban Planning / Regional and Town Planning (2021 to date)

Deputy Director of Engagement - School of Earth and Environmental Sciences (2022 – 2023)

Co-founder and Director of UQ City Impact Lab (2021 to date)

Research Affiliate – UQ Sustainable Infrastructure Research Hub (since 2022)

Member - UQ Community Engagement Community of Practice – Leadership Group (since 2023)

Planning Institute of Australia (Qld) - Fellow

I am a Research Fellow in the Institute of Social Science Research at The University of Queensland.

My research interests coalesce around issues of social justice within organisations. I am particularly curious about how the way we perceive others informs our treatment of one and other in the workplace. I spend a lot of my time exploring this idea in the context of leadership. For example, collaborators and I have been working with industry professionals in Australia and North America to understand what organisational structures inhibit minority leaders' (e.g., women, racially diverse) progression and retention. We've also been investigating possible disrupters that may serve to improve minority leaders' chances of success in leadership roles.

I also spend a lot of time on applied research problems through partnering with industry to examine the effectiveness of practical initiatives or policy shifts. Recently, we've been working on understanding the supportive mechanisms that enhance boat safety in Northern Australia, while another partnership has focused on understanding how novel bail support programs can be enhanced to support young people to meet their youth justice orders.

I received my BPsycSc and MPsyOrg from UQ Psychology before completing a PhD in Leadership / Organisational Behaviour at UQ Business School. In 2019 I moved to The University of Illinois for a postdoctoral fellowship before joining the Institute of Social Science Research in 2021.

I am also an Organisational Psychologist and consult with industry on people focused challenges. I partner with business leaders and people managers to develop and implement evidence based actions and strategies.

I work with collaborators in Australia and North America, and I have the good fortune of supporting several RHD candidates at present.

Emily is an experienced evaluator and policy analyst whose experience is designing, collecting and interpreting high quality evidence to improve outcomes for priority groups. She has deep, strategic knowledge of the Australian public sector, working alongside government agencies to design, implement and evaluate large, complex social policy initiatives.

Emily's motivated by helping her clients to use evaluation and research to understand the people they serve - conumers, service providers, Executive sponsors, advocacy groups - to deliver tailored programs and achieve better outcomes both for people and human service systems.

Her ability to build rapid rapport, synthesise complex information and balance perspectives means she is an in-demand strategic facilitator and trusted advisor to the executives of government agencies.

Her work creates impact because of her ability to connect information and people. She's great at taking complex information and making it simple and easy to action.