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Jennie Shorley

Deputy Director

Jennie Shorley

Jennie joined the Centre for Enterprise in July 2010. As Head of Bids and Partnerships Jennie has led the bids team to secure £3M of funding for business growth and innovation support for small firms, as well as successful research council bids to the ESRC, AHRC and EPSRC. As a senior member of the management team she represents MMU and the Centre for Enterprise throughout the UK and Europe.

  • Jennie led the award-winning £2.5M ERDF-funded Knowledge Action Network project across the North West. This flagship project worked with 214 small companies across the North West, supporting these firms to create 71 and safeguard 61 jobs.
  • Jennie leads partnerships across Europe for the Centre for Enterprise, including heading the £0.5M Leonardo Transfer of Innovation Programme with 10 EU business and university partners. She currently leads MMU’s involvement in 3 Erasmus+ programmes. She has strong university and business connections in Croatia, France, Poland, Finland, Spain, The Netherlands and Germany.
  • Jennie is an AURIL board member and Director (the Association for University Research and Industry Links), leading this UK association’s work on professional development for knowledge exchange professionals. She has appeared on expert panels for the World Economics Research Conference (Warsaw, 2013) and Venturefest (Manchester, 2015)
  • She leads a development programme for academics, Get That Grant, with excellent feedback, and 12 bids being submitted.
  • Jennie developed MMU’s successful Small Business Charter application, and was honoured to accept the award from Lord Young at 10 Downing Street in 2014.
  • Jennie has a BA (hons) and MA in Classics and Ancient World Studies from The University of Manchester, a Master of Research from MMU, and she is currently undertaking a PhD, exploring Academic Identity and Enterprise. Jennie has presented peer-reviewed papers at academic conferences across the UK, in Croatia and Poland.
  • She is a reviewer for Marketing Intelligence and Planning, and has chaired sessions and reviewed papers for the Institute of Small Business and Entrepreneurship and MMU Research conferences.
  • Jennie has undertaken bid writing consultancy work with private businesses, and delivers pro-bono workshops for student entrepreneurs on securing funding.

Selected publications

McNeill, T.  Khatun, A., Giddens, C., Shorley, J. and Beaven, Z. (2014), In for the long haul: models of sustained Graduate Support and Education, Industry and Higher Education, 28(6) 41-425

Shorley, J. and Giddens, C (accepted, with revisions), European University-Industry Perspectives: SME Support and Enterprise Education, Journal of Workplace Learning (forthcoming)