Dr Catherine Brentnall
Senior Lecturer
My profile
Biography
I am a Senior Lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University’s Department of Strategy, Enterprise and Sustainability, having joined the team in September 2023.
I am a long-time practitioner in Enterprise Education and bring strong practice sensibilities and policy interest to teaching and research. I also ran a consultancy for several years, achieving investment and working for clients across the UK and Europe and this practical experience informs my thinking and approaches.
My research interests are inspired by problems I encounter in practice and often involve challenging taken-for-granted assumptions. I enjoy adapting (or developing) approaches to inquiry in ways that help me explore and question the status quo. My PhD research involved proposing the concept of Competitive Enterprise Education and using Realist Evaluation to explore for whom (and what) such activities work well for (or not) and why. More recently, in light of the climate and ecological crisis, I have been exploring how Enterprise might orient itself away from Business as Usual, for example through focusing on Regenerative Business Design.
I have published in journals including the International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behaviour and Research, the Journal of Small Business Management and Entrepreneurship Education and Pedagogy.
I am the Institute for Small Business and Entrepreneurship (ISBE) Track Co-Chair for RMPI (Research Methods, Practice Inquiry/Impact).
I am teaching across a range of modules relating to enterprise/entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial development.
Projects
In 2023 I completed a research project funded by Enterprise Educators UK, entitled: Enterprise Education and Planetary Sustainability: What can EE do? The project involved developing and testing a workshop process to catalyse conversation about how Enterprise can/should change in light of the climate crisis.
A toolkit developed from this project - Enterprise Education and Planetary Sustainability: What can EE do? (Brentnall and Higgins, 2023) - is available on my ResearchGate profile. The toolkit elaborates a dialogic perspective on how change happens - that reality is constructed through conversations and interactions that people have everyday, and therefore changing any situation requires changing the conversation. A conference paper and chapter were developed through this project: Enterprise and Entrepreneurship Education in a time of Climate and Ecological Breakdown (Brentnall and Higgins, 2023), is available on my ResearchGate and Modes of Inquiry for a World worth Living in for All (Brentnall, forthcoming), is due to be published in November 2023.
In addition I have previously co-authored applications for, and co-delivered, European projects, including Erasmus+ projects and a Horizon 2020 project about enterprise, entrepreneurship social innovation.
Research outputs
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Chapters in books
Brentnall, C. (2024) 'Epilogue - Modes of Inquiry For A World Worth Living In For All....' Nurturing Modalities of Inquiry in Entrepreneurship Research: Seeing the World Through the Eyes of Those Who Research. Leeds: Emerald, pp. 257-264.
Brentnall, C. (2020) 'Space to question.' How to Become an Entrepreneurship Educator.
Brentnall, C., Diego-Rodriguez, I., Culkin, N. (2018) 'Enterprise Education Competitions: A Theoretically Flawed Intervention?.' Creating Entrepreneurial Space Talking Through Multi-Voices, Reflections on Emerging Debates. Emerald Group Publishing,
Brentnall, C., Culkin, N. (2018) ''Before University' Provision: Enterprise education through the school curriculum..' Enterprise Education in UK Higher Education.. Routledge,
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Journal articles
Brentnall, C., Lackeus, M., Blenker, P. (2024) 'Homogenization processes in entrepreneurship education: the case of Junior Achievement.' Entrepreneurship and Regional Development, 36(5-6) pp. 775-797.
Huntsley, J., Brentnall, C. (2023) 'Generative critical conversation: A method for developing reflexivity and criticality.' Journal of Small Business Management, 61(6) pp. 2788-2817.
Brentnall, C., Higgins, D. (2022) 'Problematising philosophical assumptions in EE's Invisible College.' International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behaviour and Research, 28(4) pp. 878-909.
Galloway, L., Brentnall, C., O’hUigin, D., McGowan, P. (2021) 'Special Issue: The entrepreneurship educator’s classroom – Exploring and uncovering what lies beneath.' Industry and Higher Education, 35(4) pp. 279-280.
Brentnall, C. (2021) 'Competitive Enterprise Education: Developing a Concept.' Entrepreneurship Education and Pedagogy, 4(3) pp. 346-375.
Brentnall, C., Rodríguez, I.D., Culkin, N. (2018) 'The contribution of realist evaluation to critical analysis of the effectiveness of entrepreneurship education competitions.' Industry and Higher Education, 32(6) pp. 405-417.
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Theses and dissertations
Brentnall, C. (2022) Theorising Competitive Enterprise Education.