Lecturer / Assistant Professor
Dr Penelope Muzanenhamo is Assistant Professor in Marketing and Society at UCD School of Business. This interdisciplinary role combines Marketing scholarship with societal concerns and Critical Management Perspectives. Prior to this role, Penelope served as Assistant Professor in Business in Africa specialising in Marketing.
She is Co-Chair, Academy of Management–Critical Management Studies Division, the Africa lead within the Centre for Business and Society (CeBaS) at UCD College of Business, Executive Co-director for the research theme 'People, Work, Society' within the UCD Earth Institute, and Fellow with the Scaling Business in Africa Initiative, University of Edinburgh, UK.
A multiple award winning researcher and lecturer, her research revolves around Vulnerable Market Actors. As vulnerable market actors, Penelope considers Black scholars particularly within the context of epistemic (in)justice and racial equality, African consumers and African entrepreneurs/informal traders. Collectively, these three groups play a fundamental role in building a more competitive Brand Africa and achieving Sustainable Development. However, these vulnerable market actors are traditionally located at the margins of global value-creation networks, which implicates their collective input. Penelope is particularly passionate about integrating Black voices and African business contexts into mainstream Business research and curricula.
My research and teaching focuses on Africa and Black people’s social realities, and highlights how they are largely absent from Business School curricula. Where they are represented it tends to be in relation to social problems like crime, deprivation and disease. From a business perspective this makes no sense given that Africa is a market of more than a billion consumers.
She has received Best Paper awards from the Academy of Management Conference, Critical Management Studies–Best Paper on Gender, Work and Organization 2021, and Best Critical Management Learning and Education Paper 2020; Academy of Marketing–Best Track Paper Award, 2011. In 2018, she received a plaque from Morgan State University International Symposium ‘Out of (and into) Africa: African Consumer Marketing and Firm Strategies’, for her commitment towards integrating African/Black voices in mainstream Business curricula and research.
Penelope says, "My research and teaching focuses on Africa and Black people’s social realities, and highlights how they are largely absent from Business School curricula. Where they are represented it tends to be in relation to social problems like crime, deprivation and disease. From a business perspective this makes no sense given that Africa is a market of more than a billion consumers and thus I put a spotlight on African consumers and African entrepreneurs/informal traders, the fundamental role they play in building a more competitive Brand Africa and achieving Sustainable Development, but also the way they tend to be marginalised in global value-creation networks."