Amir Sharif

Professor Amir M. Sharif

PhD, BEng (Hons), FRSA, FInstLM, FCILT, FCMI

Amir is an experienced business school dean and academic leader. He is currently the Head (Dean) of Norwich Business School and Professor of Circular Economy at the University of East Anglia. Prior to this, he was the Dean of the Faculty of Management, Law and Social Sciences at the University of Bradford and before that, was the Head (Dean) of Brunel Business School at Brunel University London. He has also held senior roles in his academic career such as Associate Dean (International and Accreditations), Associate Head, Director of MBA Programmes, Director of Learning & Teaching and was the Founding Research Director for the Centre for Operations and Supply Chain Systems and Professor of Operations Management.

Before joining academia, Amir worked for several years as an industry practitioner in the financial services and professional services sector working for JPMorgan, UBS Investment Bank and KPMG.

Across his Dean-level roles he has been responsible for circa 100+ FTE academic and non-academic staff and an average of 4,000 students across UG, and PGT/R (including across a variety of business and non-business school disciplines including law, psychology, sociology, global development and peace studies). He has lead and managed award-winning academic units where he has been able to sustain and grow programme provision and staffing during periods of transformational change. This has notably been in terms of the School of Management (University of Bradford) winning the THE Business School of the Year in 2021; whilst at Brunel, he was also part of the team that won the THE Business School of the Year in 2013 for Brunel Business School (which was also shortlisted for Outstanding Strategic Planning Team in 2014).

Amir has been a member of senior university teams – at East Anglia he is a member of the Faculty of Social Sciences Executive  and whilst at Bradford was a member of the university Executive Board, and member of University Senate. He was also the elected Deans representative on the University of Bradford Council (governing board) and the university’s Learning and Teaching Committee. At Brunel, Amir was elected to Senate as a member of the university professoriate.

Accreditations-wise he has deep experience – having successfully delivered, led and managed five (5) AMBA re-accreditation cycles, three (3) AACSB cycles (including one cycle as initial accreditation), and three (3) EQUIS reaccreditations. Amir has also championed and supported other accreditations (including securing Athena Swan, British Psychological Society and the Small Business Charter – the latter for all business schools he has worked for). He has been an AACSB Peer Mentor to business schools since 2019.

Starting his academic career as a researcher within the field of artificial intelligence, Amir rapidly developed his research interests to apply his knowledge to addressing complex societal challenges in the areas of food security, circular economy, healthcare, operations / supply chain management, decision-making and humanitarian logistics – including research interests in public health (obesity prevention programmes, school food systems – funded by the MHRC and NIHR). Amir has extensive international teaching and research experience including across Europe, MENA / Gulf region, South Asia and the UK (having also taught at the University of Cambridge and colleges within the University of London college system such as Goldsmiths College).

Amir was successfully submitted to the 2007 RAE, the 2014 and 2021 REF. His research work with DEFRA into policy development contributing to climate change mitigation / GHG adaptation for the UK food / agribusiness sector was rated 4* by REF panel UoA 19 in 2014. Amir is regularly called upon by research councils worldwide to evaluate research funding proposals including from China, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, the Netherlands, Qatar, Serbia and Switzerland as well as the EU (European Commission) and the UK (UKRI, Innovate UK, the British Council and British Academy). He has maintained grant capture over the years with funding from Innovate UK, MRC, the NIHR and the EU – the latter three grants achieved in the last two years alone.

Externally, he is a member of several boards nationally and regionally including as Deputy Chair of the Sustainable Development Partnership Board of Bradford Municipal District Council, the EPSRC Peer Review College Member (for the last 19 years) and Future Leaders Fellowships Programme panel member (for the last 6 years) - both for the UKRI. He is also a trustee for the Bradford City Challenge Foundation; and, has been a member of the International Committee and the Directors of Internationalisation group for the Chartered Association of Business Schools for several years.

Amir is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, the Chartered Institute for Logistics and Transport, the Institute of Leadership and Management and Chartered Management Institute.  He is active in and has appeared in both print, online and the digital press including for the BBC, Financial Times, Geographical (the magazine of the Royal Geographical Society), The Conversation, The Economist, Thomson Reuters, WIRED magazine, University Business and numerous other titles over the years. He has authored and contributed to reports on urban water systems, civic / economic regeneration and circular / sustainable supply chains for organisations such as Arup, Business in the Community and the Ellen MacArthur Foundation respectively.

Amir has also received recognition from numerous academic societies including for being: Top ranked for Funded Grant Peer review (2019/20) by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) Peer Review College UK; Top 20 most productive authors within Information Systems (1997-2007) as noted by the European Journal of Information Systems; and has been recipient of scholarly development grants by the Royal Academy of Engineering (UK), Royal Aeronautical Society (UK) and the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (USA) - previously known as the American Association for Artificial Intelligence.

He continues to live in West Yorkshire, is married with three children and continues to support a number of charities aligned to funding local initiatives in the community, education and healthcare.