Lead supervisor:
Prof Mark Whitehead 
Start date: September 2018
Award: General
Subject Pathway:
Human Geography
Thematic Cluster:
Place, Environment and Development Cluster
Corporate Governmentality
The trend towards companies having a Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) agenda is growing. Companies can engage in CSR in many ways including: philanthropy, cause promotion, volunteering, behaviour change programmes ect. The focus of my research is on those behaviour change programmes that fall under the heading of CSR but that are: interventionist, in so far as they are actively seeking to change behaviour in order to manage, shape and govern behaviour; in areas that are historically the province of government – education, health care, welfare, and human rights; and finally, not primarily associated with profits (as a opposed to secondary or tertiary profit motivations). The central research question of this project is: is there evidence that the current private sector, though its use of the unique type of CSR initiatives described above, can be considered a deliberate corporate governmentality project?