Simonetta Manfredi is Professor of Equality and Diversity Management, and Associate Dean for Research and Knowledge Exchange in the Business School at Oxford Brookes University.
She is the founding director of the Oxford Brookes Centre for Diversity Policy and Practice, established in 2004 and based in the Business School. Her research interests and expertise are primarily focused on gender and leadership, age discrimination and retirement policies, work-life balance, and applied diversity policy research in the Higher Education sector. She has published widely in these areas, led several projects funded by a range of organisations which include the European Commission, former Government Department for Tarde and Industry, the Higher Education Founding Council for England, and Advance-Higher Education.
She is currently leading a two-years project funded by the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council to increase the representation of women researchers in STEM as founders and co- founders of university spinout companies. Simonetta is regularly invited to speak at academic and practitioner conferences and her work has been featured by the press and media. She is co-author of Managing Equality and Diversity, published by Oxford University Press, which received the Chartered Management Institute Management Book of the Year Award in 2013 (under the management and leadership category).