Stephanie Decker

Stephanie Decker is a German-British management and business historian. She is Professor of Strategy at Birmingham Business School, University of Birmingham. Decker is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences and a Fellow of the British Academy of Management.

Early life and education

Decker was educated in Germany and the United Kingdom. She earned a Magistra Artium degree from the University of Cologne, followed by an MA and a PhD in history from the University of Liverpool. and was a Harvard-Newcomen Fellow in Business History at Harvard Business School (2007–2008).

Career

Decker's teaching career began at the University of Liverpool Management School as a lecturer in international business (2007–2010). She then joined Aston Business School, where she rose from lecturer to professor of organization studies and history by 2014. She returned to the West Midlands in 2022 to take up a chair in strategy at the University of Birmingham. During her tenure at Birmingham, she served as the deputy dean of the business school from 2023 to 2024.

She has held several international visiting positions, including a visiting professorship in African business history at the University of Gothenburg (2020–2023) and a visiting role at the University of Cagliari (2019).

Decker served as co-editor of the academic journal Business History from 2013 to 2019 before becoming joint editor-in-chief from 2019 to 2024. She is a member of the editorial boards of several journals, including Journal of Management Studies, Journal of International Business Studies, and Organization Studies.

She was elected a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy in 2013, a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences and a Fellow of the British Academy of Management in 2024. She serves as vice dean of its BAM Fellows College.