Dr. Marta Strumińska-Kutra is a sociologist in the Social Sciences Department, at Leon Kozminski University (Warsaw, Poland) and Associate Fellow in the Institute for Science, Innovation and Society, at University of Oxford (Oxford, UK). Her areas of expertise include governance, public disputes, Corporate Social Responsibility, public administration, sustainable innovation, methodology of critical and participatory research.

Her research focuses on the micro-foundations of institutional process, and is aimed at capturing both its structural and constructivist aspects. Specifically she is interested in how new institutional forms are emerging and operating in practice as opposed to an ideal type, and what is the role of conflict and power struggles in the processes of gradual institutional change.

Currently she is conducting research on diffusion and evolution of: participatory modes of governance at the level of local administration, Corporate Social Responsibility concept at the level of relations between firms and local communities, and sustainable innovation at the level of individual entrepreneurs. In the first two areas she observes conflicts as phenomena revealing political tension points, institutional and social mechanisms embedded in day-to-day practices. The third area includes comparative research of sustainable entrepreneurship within European context. The research is conducted in the frames of the EU-founded project ‘Sustainable Lifestyles 2.0: End User Integration, Innovation and Entrepreneurship (EU-InnovatE)’.

Marta is also exploring social research potential to increase reflexivity of social actors engaged in decision making processes in the public sphere. She is working on development of critical participatory methodology for public management and governance studies, which would be able to meet two important challenges within the discipline, which are: inclusion of critical perspective, and integration of theory and practice of governance.