Ana has been joining the DoctorateHub at the very early stage back in 2017 and is heading the DoctorateHub office.

Ana holds a PhD from the Engineering and Innovation Department at the Faculty of Mathematics, Computing and Technology, The Open University UK, that has been awarded for her thesis on “The role of behaviour in the transition to more energy efficient use at home”. Her research combined positivist and constructivist paradigms, so to allow for both: statistically analyse the data, whilst also allowing for an exploration of the complex set of variables that influence human behaviour. With this her research used a mixed, multi-method research methodology, using both quantitative and qualitative research procedures. Quantitative research aimed to gain insight and identify issues for the subsequent qualitative phases of the empirical work, while the qualitative research aims to explore attitudes, behaviour and experiences through such methods as interviews or focus groups.

In addition to this Ana received a degree in Economics from the Universidade do Minho (PT), a degree in International Management from the RSM Erasmus University (NL), and a Master in Business Administration in International Industrial Management from the Esslingen University of Applied Science (DE), a MBA program that had been developed to cater the needs of international senior staff from local enterprises such Behr, Bosch, Daimler, Festo, Hewlett Packard, IBM, Kärcher, Porsche or Siemens.

Ana has over a decade work experience as a Project Manager, Business Developer and Management Controller in the field of the Rational Use of Energy, Sustainability, and Smart Cities. Ana has been responsible for the coordination and management of European Funds, or the development of strategic action plans for local municipalities, such as the SEAP (Strategic Action Plan) under the Covenant of Mayors Initiative. As a member of the Finance Group of the European initiative Smart Cities Stakeholder Platform she also improved her experience in the identification, adaptation and implementation of alternative financing models and sustainability models related to smart cities.

I am one of the Co-founders of the DoctorateHub and with a particular focus on strategy development and to the building up of the various DoctorateHub support services and offers that we provide.

I have been a portfolio worker for most parts of my career and am constantly looking for opportunities where to apply my knowledge and analytical skills, which also lead to the DoctorateHub that I have been founding together with colleagues back in 2016.

Since 2012, I have tutored, mentored and coached beyond 500 professional doctoral students (mid to seniors, aged 35 to 70) with the University of Liverpool Management School’s Doctorate in Business Administration (DBA) program (UK), and since 2016 also with the DoctorateHub.com. This allowed me to understand how to tackle problems at scale, be it the tame, the complex, or the wicked. 500+ students also implies 500+ workplace-based problems which I had the chance to look at. And while working with such an array of problems can be quite fascinating, let me tell, it is also quite exhaustive for such grown up and seasoned research novices. In response to this, we thus decided to set up the DoctorateHub.com, so to provide training, mentoring, and coaching services to all those that struggle to get their workplace-based issues identified, analysed, understood, written up in a thesis, and ultimately resolved.  

In addition to this, I am also an active research fellow who has an interest in applied research, have more than a decade of global experience as a contract researcher in the areas of Innovation, ICT and the Internet, Education, Management, and Economics. I have a track record as Principal Investigator in the development and management of research, training and capacity building projects within Europe and across the globe; managing in-house teams and globally distributed external research, development and training teams, and have worked for a number of leading academic institutions, such as the United Nations University – Maastricht Economic and Social Research Institute on Innovation and Technology (UNU-MERIT), who has been ranked as one of the global top 3 institutes in its domain next to Harvard, MIT, Stanford and the London School of Economics.

As for my educational background, I obtained my PhD in 2011 from The Open University (UK) for work carried out at the Institute of Educational Technologies and that is titled ‘The Emergence of Free / Open Courses - Lessons from the Open Source Movement’. I am also holding three higher education degrees in management from universities in France, Germany and The Netherlands, and with majors in ‘International Management’ and in ‘Human Resources and Organizational Management’.