
Dr Frances Myers
Lecturer
The Open University Business School
Biography
Professional biography
Professional Biography
I am a Lecturer in Management at the Department of People and Organisations (DPO), Faculty of Business and Law, where I am currently working on the Apprenticeships programme. I have twenty years experience in teaching and learning roles at the Open University and University of Greater Manchester and have taught on a wide variety of undergraduate and postgraduate courses in business and politics via face to face, hybrid and online platform methods, with domestic and international students and via partnerships. I hold a Senior Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy (SFHEA), am an external examiner at the University of Staffordshire and have also advised as a subject specialist for QAA quality reviews in business and management education.
My PhD is in Political Economy from the University of Manchester Alliance Business School and I have an MBA from the Open University Business School alongside an undergraduate degree in History from the University of Birmingham.
Prior to working in higher education I worked in the corporate sector in a vaiety of roles as manager, project manager and trainer in telecoms and FMCG environments.
Research interests
My research interests are in a) public and organisational storytelling and mythmaking, reputation management and presentation of public narratives via mediation and mediatisation, b) digital enclosure and associated identity work undertaken by those inhabiting digital workplaces, c) development of work-based learning initiatives in higher education and impact from policy shaping on educational trajectories.
Teaching interests
I have a broad range of teaching and learning interests and have substantial experience facilitating students from Higher Education Access modules right through to MBA dissertation supervision, where I have a particular interest in the translation of political policies to workplace outcomes. I am working with two current PhD students on work-based learning topics.
Impact and engagement
You can access my most recent invited lecture for University of Lancaster Educational Research department via YouTube at Fran Myers & Hilary Collins: "Uberising’ HE? Teaching identity work behind the digital curtain" - YouTube (22 March 2021) I've also been an invited speaker at Liverpool Hope University education department, and at the University of Sharjah. I am a reviewer for Journal of Further and Higher Education, and you can find my conference papers on the publications link.
Publications
Book Chapter
Digital Artefact
Journal Article
Navigating from industry to higher education: Practitioner transitions to academic life (2025)
A moment in and out of time: precarity, liminality, and autonomy in crisis teaching (2024)
[Book Review] Social Myths and Collective Imaginaries (2018)
Signals from the silent: online predictors of non-success (2014)
Other
Learning to work whilst working to learn: Is the degree apprenticeship a route for me? (2024)
Presentation / Conference
Apprentice Perspectives: Agency, resilience, and withdrawal in work-based learning provision (2024)
Teaching in the time of COVID-19: a timescape of online tutors’ lived experiences (2022)
Living in an (im)material world?: higher education enclosure and digital dispossession (2020)
Winter is coming? Academic identity transitions for a digitized and precarious landscape. (2019)
How the Left was won? Media re-positioning of the 'moderate' during the 1984-5 Miners Strike (2018)
Lost in (social) space? - Testing the transition to learning online (2013)
Innovative technology and improving student retention & success in an online environment (2012)
Embedding employability in distance learning education (2011)