Martin OBSCHONKA is Professor in Entrepreneurship at Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia. He is a psychologist working in the research fields applied psychology, entrepreneurship, vocational behavior, economic culture, and social, economic, and technological change. He is currently Director of the Australian Centre for Entrepreneurship Research. In 2018 he was appointed as International Faculty Fellow at MIT Sloan School of Management. He is also Chair of the Academic Committee of the annual ACERE conference (Australian Centre for Entrepreneurship Research Exchange). He is Associated Editor of Small Business Economics and International Journal of Psychology and is on the Editorial Board of Journal of Business Venturing, Journal of Vocational Behavior, Current Research in Ecological and Social Psychology,and Management Review Quarterly.With his focus on person-environment interactions and transaction, his research aims at advancing the knowledge of psychological and economic factors and mechanisms relevant for human agency in context.
His research involves projects on entrepreneurial development over the lifespan, entrepreneurial regions and culture, public policy, human capital, personality, geographical psychology, organisational behaviour, well-being and stress, and social and economic change. He has an interest in interdisciplinary projects, cross-cultural perspectives, innovative data and methods, and also in the practical application of new scientific knowledge.
He has published his research in psychology journals (e.g., Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Journal of Personality, European Journal of Personality, Journal of Vocational Behavior, European Psychologist), entrepreneurship journals (e.g., Journal of Business Venturing, Entrepreneurship: Theory & Practice, Small Business Economics), economics journals (e.g., European Economic Review, Industrial and Corporate Change), economic geography journals (e.g., Regional Studies, Environment and Planning A), finance journals (Journal of Baning & Finance), and interdisciplinary journals (e.g., PLOS ONE).
His research received international media attention (for example, studies in Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Journal of Vocational Behavior, European Economic Review, Small Business Economics, Journal of Personality, Social Psychological and Personality Science, and Journal of Business Venturing Insights), with a Nr. 1 Altmetric score for media coverage in news outlets of all studies published in the top 20 innovation and entrepreneurship journals (Google Scholar journal ranking). Media outlets that covered his research include The Times (UK), Harvard Business Review, The Times of India, The Boston Globe, Forbes, The Atlantic, Inc. Magazine, The BBC, Bloomberg Businessweek, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Huffington Post, Popular Science, Time Magazine, Spiegel Online, FocusOnline, Handelsblatt, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, Tagesspiegel.
Recently, Springer Nature selected his entrepreneurial personalities in political leadership study as one of 2018’s most influential studies published by Springer Nature. In 2019, The Australian ranked him among the top performing 40 researchers in Australia who are less than 10 years into their research career (he is in the top five in the category: business, economics, management).