Professor David Oglethorpe
Professor of Environmental Sustainability
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Biography
David joined the Management School in July 2012 as Chair in Environmental Sustainability in a cross-faculty role to augment interdisciplinary research activity across the University in relation to sustainability issues and in particular in relation to the Water agenda. David has an undergraduate honours degree in Agricultural Economics (1988) and a PhD in Environmental Economics (1996), both from the University of Newcastle upon Tyne. Between his degrees, David worked in the property and farming sectors and he has remained focused on land use, natural resource and food throughout his career. After working as a Research Associate at Newcastle University, David joined the Scottish Agricultural College and Edinburgh University as senior lecturer in 1996, becoming head of the Natural Resource Economics Department and later the Land Economy Division. David left academia in 2004 to work with the newly formed English Farming and Food Partnerships as Economics and Research Director, in a new venture supported by Defra to help re-engage and re-connect the food supply chain. David returned to academic life in 2006 to a Chair in Sustainable Supply Chain Management at Newcastle Business School, Northumbria University where he was also appointed as Associate Dean, Research in 2010. David has been external examiner for undergraduate and postgraduate programmes at Reading and Bangor Universities and is currently external examiner for food and agri-business management programmes at University College Dublin.
Research
As a trained environmental and natural resource economist, David’s research has focused on the creation of, and demand for, externalities of production, principally food, taking a quantitative, operational research and mathematical modelling approach. Initially based on the land use sector, this has expanded to examine the wider food supply chain and his most recent research has tried to find optimal solutions to multi-dimensional environmental problems, examining trade-offs between triple-bottom-line objectives. This research has also focused on the food localisation debate, where political and media tensions have arisen and policy-relevant evidence-based research has been needed to ensure market failure is correctly identified.
David’s cross-faculty role is principally to take the knowledge and lessons gained through environmental economics and through his experience in the land use sector to contribute an additional social-science dimension to the significant science and engineering research undertaken at Sheffield University in relation to Water.
PhD supervision
Given his recent appointment, David is not yet supervising any PhD students but is interested in any students wishing to apply in the research areas identified above and has supervised to completion a total of 14 PhDs so far in the following areas:
- Implementation of ISO 9000 in Libyan Manufacturing Organisations;
- The Environmental Benefits of the Co-Operative Business Model In The Food Sector;
- Exploring Alternative Models of Localisation in Food Supply Chains;
- The Impact of Quality on Organizational Performance;
- An ecological economic appraisal of eco-innovations and eco-labelling;
- The Potential for Synchronous Supply the UK Automotive Supply Network;
- Positive Mathematical Programming for multifunctional outcomes in agriculture;
- The financial rate of return to the adoption of CSR initiatives in food and agriculture;
- Economic Instruments to Control Non-point Pollution & Surface Water Extraction;
- International Review of the Environmental Planning Process in Bhutan;
- Multi-objective goal programming for the European apple industry;
- Assessment of Forest Change and the Role of Scarcity in Jamaican Deforestation;
- A Mathematical Modelling study of the effects of climate change;
- A planning model to investigate resource use in Mozambique
Teaching
David teaches MGT6050 Managerial Economics on the Management School’s MBA programme and also on the MSc module MGT682 Research Methods, both of which enable him to contribute his research specialism and his research skills to teaching and learning.
Recent Publications
Oglethorpe, D. R. & Heron, G. (forthcoming) Testing the Theory of Constraints in UK Local Food Supply Chains, International Journal of Operations and Production Management.
Gadema, Z. and Oglethorpe, D. R (2011) The Use and Usefulness of Carbon Labelling Food: A Policy Perspective from a Survey of UK Supermarket Shoppers, Food Policy. 36 (6), pp 815–822.
Baranchenko, Y., & Oglethorpe, D. (2011). The Potential Environmental Benefits of Co‐Operative Businesses Within the Climate Change Agenda. Business Strategy and the Environment, 21(3), 197-210.
Oglethorpe, D. R. (2010) Optimising economic, environmental and social objectives: A goal programming approach in the food sector, Environment & Planning A, 42(5) pp 1239 – 1254.
Oglethorpe, D. R. & Heron, G. (2010) Sensible operational choices for the climate change agenda, International Journal of Logistics Management 12 (3) pp 538 - 557.
Oglethorpe, D. (2010), Food miles - the economic, environmental and social significance of the focus on local food, Invited ‘Hot Topic’ Review, CAB International: Perspectives in Agriculture, Veterinary Science, Nutrition and Natural Resources (electronic journal), 4, No. 072.