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Unfinished Business: Rethinking Business and Society research for the next 20 Years

In 2025, we celebrated the 20th anniversary of the Centre for Business, Organisations & Society.

Delegates of a conference in a lecture theatre watching a presentation
This event bought together friends old and new to celebrate the 20-year anniversary of CBOS.

This year marked the 20-year anniversary of the Centre for Business, Organisations and Society (CBOS) at the University of Bath School of Management. We held a special celebration to mark it, with the theme “Unfinished Business”.

This one-day event was dedicated to bringing together our many faculty and PhD alumni, friends and visitors from the past two decades to join a conversation with our current faculty and students on how far we’ve come in rethinking the role of business in a sustainable society, and where we need to go next to address the many challenges facing us today and in the future.

The day featured presentations and panel discussions with our past and current researchers, break-out sessions, posters, and lots of chance to meet, chat and network with friends old and new.

Programme

The programme of the day was as follows:

Time Activity Speakers
9.30 - 10am Arrivals and Coffee
10 - 10.30am Welcome: overview of CBOS at 20 – then and now Andrew Crane, Stephen Brammer and Johanne Ward-Grosvold
10.30 - 11.30am Research on business and society: where have we come from and where are we going? Gregory Jackson, Jill Brown, Thomas Roulet, Harry Van Buren and Grace Augustine
11.30 - 12.30pm Business and society in practice: what has changed and what can we expect next? Lauren Branston, Jordan Graham and Dorothee Baumann-Pauly
12.30 - 1.30pm Lunch
1.30 - 2.30pm Research rockets: CBOS PhD alumni Fred Dahlmann, Alberto Willi, Michael Rogerson, Ayse Yorgancioglu, Zhifeng Chen, Amira Mukendi and Kerrie Howard
2.30 - 3.30pm Where do we go from here? Breakout sessions to discuss key challenges facing us as business and society researchers and practitioners
3.30 - 5pm PhD poster session and drinks reception Paul Bedford, Dessi Bocheva, Jason Jonathan, Tina Kimfumu, Elif Nur Duman Cogen, Jamie Powell and Archana Raghavan
6pm Drinks social at The Architect, The Empire, Orange Grove, Bath BA1 1LP

Photos from the event

You can view photos from the event in the gallery below.

CBOS 20-year anniversary event

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