Kathleen Burke is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the House of Innovation within the Stockholm School of Economics. She is interested in the promise of entrepreneurial ecosystems as a way to organize solutions to water-related and environmental challenges. Her research is focusing on the role of universities as institutional entrepreneurs encouraging social innovation for sustainable regional development.

For her research setting, Kathleen is engaging with a Global Challenges Research Fund project, Recirculate (£7M), whose purpose is to look at “driving eco-innovation in Africa through capacity building for a safe, circular water economy” (Recirculate). Within this research setting, Kathleen studies the role of a University’s award-winning Centre for Global Eco-Innovation in governing the Recirculate entrepreneurial ecosystem (EE).

By investigating EE governance from a Global South perspective, Kathleen studies the relationship between international knowledge exchange and social innovation that is conducive in offering transformative structural change outlined in the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

Kathleen holds a BA in Economics from Hobart and William Smith Colleges and a MA in Latin American Studies with honors in International Business Diplomacy from Georgetown University’s Walsh School of Foreign Service.

As a member of the 2017 cohort of Wallenberg International Fellows, Kathleen is a student ambassador for the collaboration between the Stockholm School of Economics and Georgetown University.

She is also part of the PhD network for the Strategic Innovation Program for the Swedish mining industry and works as a teacher’s assistant at SSE.