Dr. Alison Pearce is Associate Professor of Strategic Entrepreneurship at Newcastle Business School, Affiliate Professor at Grenoble Ecole de Management and Maitre des Conferences at Universite Grenoble Alpes (France) and teaches regularly at the University of Ljubljana in Slovenia. She a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. One of the original cohort of British Erasmus students sent abroad in 1987 she spent 15 years living and working internationally in marketing, design and product development culminating in Head of Innovation and Business Development and running her own marketing and design consultancy. Joining the business school in 2005 she led the development of international student exchange programmes and partnerships, representing the university on the KEUDOS project (EU-Korean double degree development) which was runner-up for the Best International Partnership award from the THE. Nominated for National Teaching Fellow in 2015, she was then asked to lead the development of international staff mobility for the university. As part of this work, she developed and now leads the Global Entrepreneurial Talent Management 3 Research & Innovation Staff Exchange Project, funded with over 1 million euros by the EU's Horizon 2020 and the Korean Research Foundation in 2016. This involves 16 partners in HE and industry in 5 countries. She is the co-convenor of a faculty Research Interest Group and her work has been published in academic journals, industry magazines, books, blogs, and news media.

Alison's original academic qualifications were in marketing and she completed a Masters dissertation on the marketing of 'unmentionable' products as part of her MBA. After living and working abroad throughout her career, she completed a 3 year action research study for her DBA entitled "How can international staff exchange be implemented as part of the execution of an internationalisation strategy in higher education? The case of a strategic entrepreneur". She has published widely in the intersection between strategic entrepreneurship as an approach to strategy execution and international mobility for both staff and students. With a professional design background, she is also interested in the concept and method of the design entrepreneur.

Since leading the Global Entrepreneurial Talent Management 3 research and innovation staff exchange (RISE) project, Alison has studied the role of strategic entrepreneurs, autonomous strategic behaviour and strategic neglect in project management and delivery. She has also explored international collaboration and the entrepreneurial traits of young people. 

Alison is a qualitaive researcher, preferring participatory and democratic research methods which produce actionable knowledge and change. She particularly likes the concept of the tempered radical and has coined the terms 'multisociation' and 'tempered flexibility' in her writing.

Alison's work has been published in international academic journals, handbooks, conference proceedings, in the news media, industry magazines and blogs. She is on the Editorial Board of the Business & Technological University's (Tblisi) journal and has edited various journal special issues.