Dr Charles Barthold

Professional biography

Dr Charles Barthold is a senior lecturer at the Open University. Previously, he worked at Kingston University and the University of Leicester. He holds a PhD from the University of Leicester (2015), a Masters in Philosophy from Paris-Panthéon-Sorbonne University and a Masters in Social Sciences from Sciences-po Paris.

Research interests

Charles employs a variety of approaches to organisation studies and leadership in relation to contemporary economic, environmental and social issues. Firstly, he is interested in studying how organisations and leadership reproduce power relations. This includes different types of organisational power relations such as organisational control; anthropocentrism in relation to the environment; and organisational logics informed by gender, racialisation and precarious work. Secondly, his project is to analyse how resistance, politics and ethics in organisations can bring about novel forms of democratisation and emancipation. Thirdly, Charles is interested in organisational discourses. Methodologically, his work is qualitative (ethnography, film analysis, discourse analysis) or conceptual. It is linked in particular to studying discourse and visual culture.  Charles is a member of the Research into Employment, Empowerment and Futures (REEF) academic centre of excellence. Finally, Charles is associate editor for Culture and Organization and one of the editors of MayFly Books.

The work of Charles was published in leading journals such as Organization Studies; Organization; Journal of Business Ethics; Business Ethics: A European Review; Critical Perspectives in Accounting; Scandinavian Journal of Management; Gender Work and Organization; Culture and Organization; and Theory, Culture and Society. Charles also published a book: Resisting Financialization with Deleuze and Guattari.

Charles co-organised a ‘Creaturely Ethics, Poetics and Animal Studies’ stream at the 11^th International Critical Management Studies Conference (2019), a SIG on “what management can and cannot do against Corruption?  Managerial technologies in anti-corruption policies” at Europea Academy of Management conference (2024), and a stream on “Regenerate CMS through Genealogies of Power” at the International Critical Management Studies Conference (2025).

Charles has successfully supervised several PhD students. He is happy to be approached by potential PhD students in his areas of research.

Teaching interests

Charles has extensive teaching experience in a higher education context including postgraduate (PhD, MBA and MSc) and undergraduate students. This includes both face-to-face and distance learning. He has also supervised to completion a number of undergraduate and MSc dissertations and PhD theses.

He completed a year of production of B870 - Managing in a Changing World, the first module on the new MBA where he authored some of the material on culture and leadership. Charles led the production of the first core module of the MSc HRM: B810 - The Human Resource Professional. He also chaired the production of the MSc in HRM optional module: B814 - Learning and development at work. Furthermore, he participated to the production of the two other core modules of the MSc HRM: B811 - Human Resource Management in context, and B812 - Creating evidence-based value in people management. He is also the current lead for the CIPD-accredited MSc in Human Resource Management. Finally, he is an Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.