Dr Dammy Joseph
I am a Lecturer in Entrepreneurship (Assistant Professor) at the University of Westminster. My work focuses on understanding how people navigate entrepreneurship within informal, marginalised, and resource-constrained contexts. I specialise in qualitative research, and I am actively expanding my expertise in quantitative methods to complement my research portfolio.
My academic interests centre on Informal entrepreneurship, refugee entrepreneurship, informality, and intersectionality. I am particularly interested in how social structures, institutional barriers, and lived experiences shape entrepreneurial possibilities for women and migrant communities in the UK and the Global South. My work is grounded in community engagement and aims to generate insights that support policy development, inclusion, and sustainable economic participation.
I teach and supervise across multiple entrepreneurship and research-focused modules and work closely with students to help them build analytical, reflective, and practice-based skills. I am committed to producing research with real-world relevance and I welcome collaborations with scholars, policymakers, and organisations working on entrepreneurship and inclusive economic development.
My research mainly focuses on informal economies, refugee and migrant entrepreneurship, gendered entrepreneurial experiences, intersectionality, and contextualised entrepreneurship theory. I examine how structural barriers, institutional dynamics, and socio-economic constraints shape entrepreneurial intentions, actions, and outcomes. I also explore how digitisation and new forms of economic participation reshape informal and marginalised entrepreneurial landscapes.
I draw on frameworks such as intersectionality, mixed embeddedness, and institutional theory, as well as qualitative and increasingly mixed-method research designs, to study entrepreneurship in ways that centre context, identity, and power.
I have published research in peer-reviewed outlets such as the Journal of Small Business and Enterprise Development and the Journal of Accounting Literature. I also serve as a reviewer for academic journals, contributing to the evaluation and advancement of high-quality scholarship within entrepreneurship and management studies. My publications engage with themes of marginalisation, socio-economic inequality, and inclusive entrepreneurship. I am committed to producing research that bridges academia, policy, and community practice, with a focus on supporting women, migrants, and underrepresented entrepreneurial groups.
