Anne Marguerite de Bruin is a socio-economist and Professor of Economics in the School of Economics and Finance at the Albany campus of Massey University, New Zealand. Her research focuses on social enterprises and women's entrepreneurship and innovation.
Academic career
After completing a Massey UniversityPhD in 1997, titled Transformation of the welfare state in New Zealand with special reference to employment, de Bruin rose to full professor.[2][1]
De Bruin is the founding director of Massey University's New Zealand Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship Research Centre (SIERC) an interdisciplinary research centre on its Albany campus which opened on 19 July 2018.[4][5] The idea for SIERC came about in the mid-1990s, when de Bruin was working in Ōtara, South Auckland, and was developed further during her 2009 Fulbright New Zealand Senior Scholar fellowship, when she spent four months studying entrepreneurship at Babson College, Boston.[5][6] SIERC has a staff of 12 academics, and its first case study was of innovation and entrepreneurial activity at Wellington Zoo.[5]
De Bruin's research is focussed on entrepreneurship and innovation, particularly by women, and how it can create employment in disadvantaged communities or regions. She also studies how social institutions and enterprises can support the community. Her recent work combines these two areas in the study of women social entrepreneurs, and their role in challenging and reshaping capitalism and producing progressive social change.[7] Her research area is interdisciplinary, and she has collaborated with researchers in areas ranging from sociology to marketing, finance, management, and property studies.[3]
De Bruin, in collaboration with sociologist Christine Read, studied the reaction of Ngāi Tahu's Takahanga Marae in Kaikōura to the devastating 2016 Kaikōura earthquake. Their work concluded that Māori social relationships form a support network that could be a source of resilience in times of crisis.[7]
With her PhD student Bruce Borquist she has studied the role of social enterprises in religious organisations. Traditionally, the work of churches and other religious groups has been funded by donations, but increasingly their social and community work relies on hybrid organisations that have both social and economic goals. De Bruin's research examines the relationship between this kind of entrepreneurship and an organisation's religious values.[7]
