The University of Manchester (Manchester, UK) has a low-residency (three weeks onsite over the entire program) PhD (Doctor of Business Administration) in Business Strategy, offered through their Business School.

The PhD can be affiliated with the Manchester Institute of Innovation Research (MIoIR). This new center at the U Man Business School is a combination of PREST and CRIC, two widely know research centres at the University of Manchester now joined "to make the world's leading centre for innovation research." It has some 50 research staff and annual budget of $5M.

FS-Related Faculty at U Manchester:
U Man has, by far, the most broad based and institutionally connected futures faculty of any of the low residency programs identified to date. This is a great place to see how foresight is done in the organizational, institutional, and transnational environment.

Faculty with FS interests and projects include:
Ian Miles (email), Director of U Man's Center for Research on Innovation and Competition (CRIC), now part of the Manchester Institute of Innovation Research (MIoIR). Dr. Miles is a leading innovation and technology futurist.
Mike Keenan (email) of the foresight group PREST at UMan, now also a part of MIoIR, runs the European Foresight Monitoring Network, tracking global foresight projects.
Denis Loveridge (email) researches technology choice, technology assessment and foresight programmes.
Maria Nedeva (email) studies social change in relation to S&T innovation.
Luke Georghiou (email), Professor of Science and Technology Policy and Management and Director of PREST/MIoIR.
Rafael Popper (email) and Ozcan Saritas (email) also of PREST, do foresight and long range planning, and teach their 5-day "crash course" in foresight.
Graham May (email), former head of the discontinued Leeds Met University MS in Futures Studies, also has a casual appointment at U Man.

Potential FS Theses Areas:
UM is a great place for either an in-person or a distance Futures Studies PhD in a broad set of areas in business, management, strategy, technology studies, and education.

MIoIR Publishes two leading Tech Mgmt Journals:
Technology Analysis & Strategic Management (Taylor & Francis)
Analysis and assessment of technologies, their potentialities and impacts, and the development of methodological tools to identify and analyze key scientific and technological developments.
R&D Management (Blackwell)
Articles address the interests of both practicing managers and academic researchers in R & D and innovation management

Other FS Distinctions:
PREST at U Man has created an excellent low-residency, five day crash course in foresight, at the MSc level. " The course draws upon PREST's extensive experience of organising and researching Foresight activities across Europe and beyond. This includes direct assistance to more than a dozen countries' national Foresight exercises, close cooperation with the EC and UNIDO, and facilitating Foresight activities in public and private organisations." They have also streamed this course over the web in special cases as well.

FS-Related Theses Done to Date: (very partial list)
Effie Amanatidou (bio) is in the PhD program (year 5 of 6 in 2008) doing a foresight related thesis. She is based in Thessaloniki, Athens, Greece. Prior to her PhD she worked as Director of the Science, Technology and Innovation Management Policy Studies Unit in the Atlantis Research Organization in Greece, from 1996-2006.

Time: Three years, with typical progression, up to seven years, part time. You are evaluated annually on your progress and after 3 years (6 years part-time) you are given another 6 months/1 year to finish up.

Cost: USD $52,000 for the five year distance DBA PhD program.£12,000 year 1, and£6,000 per year for years 2,3,and 4. This is pricey, but some of the more business, innovation, and policy oriented students, or their companies, would clearly be willing to pay premium for access to the U Man/PREST network. Students who have already done the MSc through PREST or Manchester continue on for the PhD part time for 1800Euro ($2600 USD) per year for 6 years ($15,600 USD total), a substantially lower price.

Q: Are any grants or scholarships available?

Contact:
Kate Barker, PhD Program Coordinator (email)
Lisa Gledhill, Research Support Officer (email)
Siobhan Drugan, External Relations Manager (email)

Link to "Studying at MIoIR" (MS, PhD)

Project: Inititate a conversation with Dr. Miles, Dr. Keenan, and others. Getting U Man to list a formal futures-oriented track on their website in relation to this PhD would be a nice advance for our field.