PhD candidates in Management

Here is a short presentation of our PhD candidates currently enrolled in our programme.

Current PhD candidates

keyboard_backspace See also: Finished PhDs.

Candidate Principal supervisor Phd Project
Masoud Vardast Professor Fred Selnes

Vardast`s research interests include data analytics, machine learning and their applications in marketing.

Monica Therese Hagen

Professor Marit Engeset

Hagen`s research focus on unconscious effects of commercials. Specifically, how prior exposure of a commercial/brand could influence consumers attention and brand evaluation.

Neema Daniel Kaaya Professor Håvard Ness

Kaaya`s research focuses on how Networks between Destinations Management Organizations (DMOs) support the local sustainability and resilience of destinations in Norway. The candidate is using a mixed method approach for the methodology and is now in the data collection phase.

Mari Haugerud Sjøgren

Professor Leif Egil Hem

Sjøgren`s research interests include consumer behavior and brand management. Has taught the subjects brand management and marketing channels at bachelor level.
Richard Reinsberg   Professor Per Egil Pedersen

Reinsberg`s research focuses on how to innovate in and between business models in order to become sustainable through co-creation with consumers, and other key actors.

Sara Tavassoli Professor Kåre Sandvik  Tavassoli`s research focuses on joint advertisement effectiveness and how it can benefit partnering companies to build their brand images. The candidate`s research interest is to expand the current knowledge in toursim industry.
Muhammad Adeel Riaz Associate professor Marius Rohde Johannessen Riaz`s research focuses on how affordance theory can provide a new perspective on the benefits of the digital platform for marketing-relevant users, firms, and sectors of the economy.
Anette Myhre Momrak Assoicate Professor Martha Morais-Storz Momrak`s research focuses on customer participation in innovation efforts as an implementation approach to market orientation - When and how to actively involve customers in innovation?
Babak Haghpour Professor Halgeir Halvari Haghpour mainly focuses on the research on consumer behavior and behavioral economics. The candidate`s research contains consideration of opportunity cost by the consumers. Haghpour investigates about both antecedents (e.g., consumer’s type of motivation) and outcomes of opportunity cost consideration by consumers (such as well-being).
Håkon Osland Sandvik Professor Vinit Parida Sandvik`s research focus is on digital servitization toward autonomous solutions in B2B markets.
Thi Diem My Ta Professor Marit Engeset Ta`s research interests include consumer behaviour, leadership and decision making.
Kyrre Einar Hegg Professor Håvard Ness Hegg is a public PhD candidate. The candidate works for Vinje municipality, with USN as academic partner institution. Heggs`s project concerns digitalisation in rural business. Kyrre’s work duty is management of a project pilot that USN and Vinje are running together as part of the European Interreg project COM3.
Guðbjartur Karl Reynisson     Associate professor Birgit Solem Reynisson`s studies the governance and design of digital platforms and how it is developed between consumers, complementors and platform owners.
Vidar Top Professor Ole Boe Top`s research focuses on how to affect business top-down by zooming in on "silent and violent behavior in the boardroom". Do board members have feelings, and if so, do these feelings impact the dynamics of the group and the decisions they make? For instance, how does emotion regulation or psychological safety relate to corporate governance?
Mehrnaz Moghaddam Professor Elsa Kristiansen Moghaddam`s research focuses on consumer participative behavior and their psychological needs in the event setting.
Yashoda Karki Professor Karen Stendal Karki`s research focuses on exploring the role of digital social enterprises on contributing to sustainable development. The candidate is interested in understanding how social enterprises, situated on different institutional context, perceive and actualize the action possibilities of digital tools and technologies on addressing economic, social, and environmental challenges.
Yaozhi Zhang Professor Nina Prebensen Zhang specializes in service marketing and the candidate`s research interests center on consumer behavior and marketing strategies in the hospitality and tourism context. The candidate is also interested in research topics related to smart tourism and social media data analytics.
Huong Giang Nguyen Professor Kåre Sandvik  Nguyen`s research focuses on business crisis context and how different strategies impact marketing and business performances. The candidate`s methodologies are experiments, SEO, and time series analysis.
Luying Zhou Professor Marit Engeset Zhou`s research interest lies at the intersection between consumer behavior and new technologies. In Zhou`s primary line of research, the candidate studies how to use incentives and nudging to increase adoption of sustainability-oriented technology. Additionally, Zhou conducts research on how service robots affect consumer behavior and well-being in frontline services.
Ivie Porto Professor David S. A. Guttormsen 

Porto`s research focus on how message framing/rhetoric can affect choice for sustainable goods/services.

Baptiste Marescaux Professor Anja Hagen Olafsen

Marescaux`s research revolves around the different ways employees modify their own job to improve their working conditions and make their work more engaging. The candidate also looks at how those job modification processes are underpinned by factors of intrinsic motivation.

Anders Råve Associate Professor Birgit Solem

Råve`s research centers around the drivers behind, and the implications of, digitalization in the retail sector.

Rocky Mahmud Associate Professor Thomas Brekke Rocky Mahmud is a PhD Research Fellow at campus Vestfold. The candidate will be working towards finding an optimum business model for autonomous vehicles. Mahmud`s research interest are digitalisation, business model, innovation, strategy, finance, and marketing.
Bryan Solorzano Bajana Professor Gudrun Helgadottir

Bajana`s research interests include Social Enterprises, Community Economic Development, Rural Development, Business model integration into indigenous communities from Latin America.

Dimitris Polychronopoulos Professor Anh Nguyen Duc

Polychronopoulo`s research develops new knowledge about the interaction between the actors involved in the process of migrant inclusion via an entrepreneurship path. The project is known as Migrant Work Inclusion Work Package II and explores entrepreneurship support programs in Norway and the experiences of the migrants who participate in them.

Lill Susan Rognli Vale Associate Professor Ingeborg Nordbø

Vale`s research focuses on collaborative processes between different groups of stakeholders in the development of sustainable tourism destinations, within the tourism eco-system in a rural context.  

Sinuo Wu Professor Karen Stendal Wu`s research focuses on Extended reality (AR\VR\MR) in the Virtual teams and how XR technologies could impact team collaboration.
Hamza Siddique Professor David S. A. Guttormsen Siddique`s research focuses on Inclusion of Marginalized Groups of People: Role of psychological safety to create positive team climate in Global Virtual Teams.
Cathrine Hansen Furseth Professor Cathrine Seierstad Furseth`s research interests are in the field of corporate governance, specifically the board of directors. How can boards be effective, what is an effective board, and what are the best ways for boards to accomplish this?
Tor Erik Nyberg Trond Løyning, Associate Professor Nyberg’s research focuses on co-creation and collaborations for work inclusion. His project will be part of the research project Migrant Work Inclusion (MWInc).
Monish Bajracharya Martin Falk, Professor Bajracharya's research is investigating bilateral relationship between climate risks and world cultural heritage sites in the context of Europe and beyond.
Helle Østbye Susann Gjerde, Assoicate Professor Østbye's project is aiming to gain a better understanding of how levels of affect integration in leadership teams influence adaptive functioning in complex situations.
Heidi Kvale Martin Falk, Professor Kvale's research aims to investigate what factors of agenda setting leading to political decisions that address environmental sustainability challenges in a selection of Norwegian municipalities.

Gunn Kristin Aasen Leikvoll

Professor Birgit Leick Leikvoll’s research focuses of the role of small-scale farming in rural regions when it comes to building community resilience against external shocks.
Seyedehmehrsa Fatemi Professor Behzad Behdani Fatemi’s research focuses on interorganizational collaboration and coordination for digital transformation from a value chain perspective and how this digital transformation can contribute to sustainability improvement in an industrial cluster.

keyboard_backspace See also: Finished PhDs.