Dr Ama Lawani

Dr Ama Lawani is a Lecturer in Project Management and Leadership at Stirling Management School. Before becoming an academic, Ama worked as a project co-ordinator, facilitating projects of various scopes.

She undertook her master's degree at Robert Gordon University, where she won an industry award for the best dissertation in MSc Project Management and later achieved a doctoral degree in Management in 2018. She is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and has extensive experience in the higher education sector in teaching and learning. Ama teaches in several areas of Leadership and Management. Before transitioning to the University of Stirling, she taught on a range of postgraduate, undergraduate and executive leadership and management modules at RGU. Her teaching expertise is in the areas of project/operations management, leadership, team behaviours, strategic project management, resilience and change management.

She holds an APMP qualification from the Association for Project Management (now Project Management Qualification, PMQ) and is a Full Member of the Chartered Management Institute (MCMI). She has presented at conferences such as the Project Management Institute (PMI) Research and Education Conference Doctoral Colloquium in 2014, the British Academy of Management (BAM) in 2021, and she delivered a public lecture at an event sponsored by the Association for Project Management (APM) Scotland Branch, Aberdeen Chapter in 2022.

Research projects she has undertaken as PI include "Exploring Decision Making in the Front-End Loading Stage of Project Management", which was funded by the Engineering Construction Industry Training Board (ECITB).

Beyond academia, Ama has an interest in learning about culture, communities and wellbeing. She also likes reading literature on cognitive & behavioural psychology.

Her key research interests are applied leadership and management, including project organisational behaviour and project management practices. Alongside more traditional research activities, her research practice includes narrative writing and poetry.