Dr Sahar Bakr

Role

Dr Sahar Bakr is a Senior Lecturer and researcher in Marketing at Nottingham Business School, Nottingham Trent University. Her research explores consumer vulnerability and the hidden harms of normative technology design, with an emphasis on health and fitness technology. Sahar is interested in societal impact and has worked with commercial and charity organisations to help address the problems they face. She is Chair of the Practice Theory track at the British Academy of Management (BAM).
Sahar teaches on the BA Marketing, BA Business Management and Marketing and BA International Business and is the Module Leader for Fundamentals of Marketing. Dr Bakr is Deputy Director of Doctoral Programmes at the business school where she leads a portfolio of support initiatives aimed at doctoral and early-career researchers. Dr Bakr is also the founder and current Convenor of the British Academy of Management's Early Career Academic (ECA) Network, and she serves as a Trustee at Runspire Together.

Career overview

Sahar is a Senior Lecturer and researcher in marketing. A pharmacist by background, she holds an MSc in Biotechnology and Entrepreneurship and a PhD in Business and Management from the University of Nottingham, which focuses on consumer use of smart devices in the context of health, fitness and self-tracking. Sahar spent time in the pharmaceutical and medical device industry as a Product Manager, where she managed several social media campaigns and worked with organisations to launch both consumer (B2C) and medical-grade (B2B) products successfully in the MENA region. Her experience in industry has formed the basis of her teaching ethos, which is centred around the power of industry-focused marketing education and the application of theoretical concepts to real-life situations. Before joining NTU, Sahar held a full-time position at De Montfort University, after working part-time at the University of Nottingham and Birmingham City University while doing her PhD. During her time in higher education, she has designed, led and taught several modules on undergraduate, MSc, and MBA courses, including Direct Marketing, Social Marketing, Digital Consumer Behaviour, Digital Entrepreneurship, Entrepreneurial Marketing and Project Management.
Beyond her teaching and research, Sahar is interested in societal impact and has worked with commercial and charity organisations to help address the problems they face. She is Chair of the Practice Theory track at the British Academy of Management (BAM) and the founder and current Convenor of BAM's Early Career Academic (ECA) Network. Sahar is Deputy Director of Doctoral Programmes at Nottingham Business School, where she leads a portfolio of training initatives aimed at doctoral researchers. She is also a Trustee at Runspire Together.

External activity

Dr Bakr is an active contributor to the international academic community, with a strong commitment to supporting scholarly networks and early-career development. She serves as a Council Member and Network Convenor at the British Academy of Management (BAM), where she plays a key role in advancing Early Career Researchers’ (ECR) professional development. In this capacity, she facilitates engagement and community building through research assemblies, networking events, and the establishment of BAM’s first mentorship scheme for ECRs, developed in collaboration with Network co-chairs.

In 2026, Dr Bakr founded and currently co-chairs the Practice Theory at BAM special interest group, which promotes research and dialogue on practice theory approaches in consumption, management and organisation studies. Further information about this special interest group and its activities can be found on its LinkedIn page: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/practice-theory-at-bam-track/

Sahar contributes to academic publishing as a Guest Editor of a forthcoming special issue at the British Journal of Management (BJM). She is also a member of the Early Career Researcher editorial boards of Qualitative Market Research: An International Journal and acts as a peer reviewer for a range of highly ranked journals in marketing, consumer behaviour, social marketing, and information systems.

In recognition of her contributions to the business and management academic community, Dr Bakr was awarded the BAM Medal for Outstanding Contribution by an Early-Career Academic in 2024.