Dr Helen Eccleston
Associate Director for Student Success
Business School
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5116-9365 Profile
Biography
Dr Helen Eccleston is Associate Director at Edge Hill University Business School, where she leads on strategic priorities relating to student outcomes and recruitment.
She holds an MSc in Business Management and a PhD in Management (Entrepreneurship and Strategy) from the University of Lancashire. In 2017 she was awarded a fully funded doctoral studentship by the Centre for SME and Enterprise Development to investigate how small and medium-sized enterprises in the North West of England practise strategy through routinised organisational activities. That same year she was appointed Associate Lecturer in the School of Management at the University of Lancashire. She joined Edge Hill University in 2020 as Lecturer, progressing to Senior Lecturer in 2024, when she also became Programme Leader for BSc Business Management. In 2025 she was appointed Associate Director.
Research Interests
Her ongoing research adopts both a processual and social practice lens to explore the day-to-day entrepreneurial activities in small family business. She also conducts research in management education, with a particular focus on how principles of human and ecological flourishing can inform teaching and learning. She has presented her work at numerous international conferences, addressing topics such as strategising, practical coping, and the emotional dimensions and lived experiences of entrepreneurship. Helen’s most recent work published in Human Relations examines the political potential of affect and how it matters for entrepreneuring as organisation creation.
Teaching
Helen is an accomplished educator who brings a wealth of expertise and passion to her teaching practice. She assumes a leadership role across multiple modules: BUS2019 Employability and BUS3037 Organisational Misbehavior. Helen has experience teaching across undergraduate, postgraduate, and executive education programmes.
- Deflated in shame and puffed up in pride: How affective practices matter for entrepreneuring
- From critical entrepreneurship research to critical entrepreneurship in the classroom
- When reason fails: How emotions grounded in unknowingness disclose alternative modalities for learning how to navigate paradox