Rate My Professor Ben Richards

Dr. Benjamin Richards serves as Assistant Professor in Employment Relations within Northumbria University's Newcastle Business School, contributing to the broader field of Business & Economics. His academic journey is marked by a distinctive interdisciplinary foundation, having earned a BA (Hons) in Archaeology, an MA (Hons) in Heritage Studies, and a PhD in Management, all from the University of York. His doctoral thesis focused on the organisation of postfascist subcultural movements, utilizing semiotics to analyze the interplay between ideational and material elements. This background in archaeology and material culture studies informs his unique approach to contemporary organizational scholarship.

Richards specializes in Employment Relations, with research interests at the intersections of culture and ideology in modern working and organizing practices. He investigates neoliberal processes of massification and their links to authoritarianism, conspiracy theory, and the far-right through theoretical and qualitative lenses, incorporating social and material semiotics alongside visual, archaeological, and historical methods. Ongoing projects explore the anti-managerialism of Trumpism, fascist aesthetics, radical unproductivity, and alternative academic publishing. As book review editor and a member of the editorial collective for ephemera: theory & politics in organization, he plays a key role in advancing critical discourse in the field. Notable publications include 'Organizational mythopoeia and the spectacle in postfascist (dis)organization' (2022, co-authored with S. Mollan, Ephemera, 22(1), pp. 57-78); 'Counter-hostility as defensive strategy in a hostile takeover: The acquisition of Hillards supermarket chain by Tesco' (2025, co-authored with P. Garnett and S. Mollan, Business History, 67(5), pp. 1247-1269); 'Conspiracy, conspiracy theory, and conspiracism' (2025, co-authored with S. Mollan and B. Geesin, Elgar Encyclopedia of Critical Management Studies, pp. 70-73); 'History' (2025, co-authored with S. Mollan, Elgar Encyclopedia of Critical Management Studies, pp. 243-249); and a book review of David Graeber's Pirate Enlightenment (2025, Culture and Organization, 31(6), pp. 548-551). Richards accepts PhD students in his research areas.