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Dr Dicle Kortantamer

Dr Dicle Kortantamer

  • Position: Lecturer in Project Management
  • Areas of expertise: Projects; leadership; temporality; boundary work; social value
  • Email: D.Kortantamer@leeds.ac.uk

Profile

I am a project management researcher, lecturer, and advisor. Prior to academia, I spent over 15 years in industry, leading complex information technology-enabled strategic change projects, programmes, and portfolios, and providing consultancy services in leadership and project management. I have a PhD from the University of Brighton, an MSc from the London School of Economics and Political Science in Analysis, Design and Management of Information Systems, and a BSc in Computer Engineering.

My interdisciplinary research focuses on projects, programmes, and portfolios, and seeks to link this to questions about leadership, time-related issues, boundary work, and value creation. The settings for my research include public organisations, private organisations, and grassroots community projects. My PhD brought together studies of projects and leadership to outline the complexities inherent in projects that make leadership particularly difficult, and offered an alternative model of project leadership. In 2018, I became a research fellow on the Project X: Better Government Projects - a three-year, ESRC-funded programme of research. In this role, I researched the leadership challenges faced by projects operating in radical uncertainty.

I actively engage with the UK parliament, government, industry, and higher education institutions. I was invited to participate in the 2020 Cabinet Office workshops that informed their research agenda for the National Leadership Centre, co-designed a pilot study on leading the delivery of public policy responses to societal grand challenges through projects with the Cabinet Office, participated in the UK parliament’s expert surveys on the COVID-19 outbreak and the UN Climate Summit, and published an Association for Project Management report that informed the written evidence provided by Project X for the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee’s (PACAC) inquiry into ‘The Government’s management of its major projects’. I am invited as a keynote speaker and panellist to various Association for Project Management conferences and events, and a guest lecturer by various higher education institutions (e.g., the UCL Bartlett and Imperial College).

Research interests

My research connects studies of leadership and projects. I am particularly interested in bringing ideas about temporality and boundary work into understandings of leadership, and ideas about plural leadership and meaning-making into understandings of leadership in projects.

My previous and current research has drawn on practice-based theories to examine questions such as how leaders cope with high degrees of uncertainty and urgency, and how individuals or collectives from different organisations or functions effectively work together to accomplish the work of leadership in projects. The settings for my research include public organisations, private organisations, and grassroots community projects.

I received the following awards for my work on leadership in projects:

  • Best conference paper by an early career researcher award, IRNOP (International Research Network on Organising by Projects) Conference 2018
  • Association for Project Management (APM) research grant in 2017

Professional memberships

  • Association for Project Management
  • European Group for Organization Studies

Research groups and institutes

  • Cities, Infrastructure and Energy

Current postgraduate researchers

<h4>Postgraduate research opportunities</h4> <p>We welcome enquiries from motivated and qualified applicants from all around the world who are interested in PhD study. Our <a href="https://phd.leeds.ac.uk">research opportunities</a> allow you to search for projects and scholarships.</p>
Projects
    <li><a href="//phd.leeds.ac.uk/project/2203-project-leadership-and-artificial-intelligence">Project leadership and Artificial intelligence</a></li> <li><a href="//phd.leeds.ac.uk/project/1345-project-leadership:-time-related-issues-in-leading-a-temporary-organisation">Project leadership: Time-related issues in leading a temporary organisation</a></li> <li><a href="//phd.leeds.ac.uk/project/2192-purpose-led-leadership-model-with-embedded-sustainability-for-nuclear-decommissioning">Purpose-led leadership model with embedded sustainability for nuclear decommissioning</a></li> <li><a href="//phd.leeds.ac.uk/project/1346-value-creation-through-projects">Value creation through projects</a></li>