Professor Christine Rivers
About
Biography
Christine Rivers is Professor of Business Education and Mindfulness at Surrey Business School, People and Organisations. Her research explores the intersection of mindfulness and contemplative practices with business education, personal and professional development and the impact of technology on working life and wellbeing. In addition to her academic portfolio Christine is a qualified health and lifestyle coach, yoga, meditation and breath work teacher.
Over the years, Christine has been actively involved in shaping business and management education through various service roles inside and outside Surrey. At Surrey Christine has served as Head of Department, Director of Studies and Director of Education. Outside Surrey, Christine has served as Associate Editor for Journal of Management Education, reviewer for Academy of Management Learning and Education, British Academy of Management, Chartered Association of Business Schools. She serves as Teaching and Learning Conference (TLC AoM) chair and executive member for Management Education Development (MED AoM) division (2024 programme chair).
For her contributions Christine has received recognition and awards from British Academy of Management, Management Organisational Behaviours Teaching Society and holds National Teaching Fellowship with Advance HE UK. She regularly publishes her work in journals, Times Higher Education, gives keynotes and podcast talks.
Christine is author of the forthcoming book (Nov 24) published by Routledge: Mindfulness and Business Education: Developing self-aware future leaders - A practical guide.
Areas of specialism
University roles and responsibilities
- People Development Lead (Chair) for Surrey Business School
Previous roles
Affiliations and memberships
programme chair AoM 2024, Chicago
News
ResearchResearch interests
Christine's research focuses on mindfulness and contemplative practice. She is particularly interested in understanding the intersection with technology, employability and lifestyle and wellbeing in business education and beyond.
Research projects
ADD philosophy is grounded in five inclusive principles for learning and teaching: Explore, create, collaborate, share and reflect. These principles are equally important for students while learning and academics while designing modules. The ADD method is based on five practical steps, identified throughout years of testing and in-depth research on visual usability:
Step 1. Template and content > Unified structured module design template and consistent approach to embedded content
Step 2. Supporting visuals > Individual conceptual module maps with weekly module maps and use of decorative images for content (e.g. weekly agendas, activities, narratives)
Step 3. Learning icons > Integrated learning icons to enhance student learning and signpost particular aspects in both the VLE and learning materials
Step 4. Narratives > Scaffolded learning through guided activities and captured content accompanied by short narratives and hyperlinked content
Step 5. Learning resource sets > Including sets of bite-size videos and deeper learning materials (activities scaffolded with narratives).
While ADD suggests following these five steps to warrant a holistic student experience, each step can also be implemented separately or over time. ADD is therefore a flexible approach to designing hybrid learning and teaching journeys, guided by questions of value and purpose.
While a consistent, templated approach is advocated for all modules on a particular programme to ensure students are able to easily navigate through modules without getting lost or having to adapt to different structures, the team also strongly believe that module personality and academic voice is crucial. These can be achieved by individual bespoke module maps and narratives to support learning. In addition, where face-to-face time is reduced, the use of narratives often replaces corridor chats and pre and post lecture conversations.
Research interests
Christine's research focuses on mindfulness and contemplative practice. She is particularly interested in understanding the intersection with technology, employability and lifestyle and wellbeing in business education and beyond.
Research projects
ADD philosophy is grounded in five inclusive principles for learning and teaching: Explore, create, collaborate, share and reflect. These principles are equally important for students while learning and academics while designing modules. The ADD method is based on five practical steps, identified throughout years of testing and in-depth research on visual usability:
Step 1. Template and content > Unified structured module design template and consistent approach to embedded content
Step 2. Supporting visuals > Individual conceptual module maps with weekly module maps and use of decorative images for content (e.g. weekly agendas, activities, narratives)
Step 3. Learning icons > Integrated learning icons to enhance student learning and signpost particular aspects in both the VLE and learning materials
Step 4. Narratives > Scaffolded learning through guided activities and captured content accompanied by short narratives and hyperlinked content
Step 5. Learning resource sets > Including sets of bite-size videos and deeper learning materials (activities scaffolded with narratives).
While ADD suggests following these five steps to warrant a holistic student experience, each step can also be implemented separately or over time. ADD is therefore a flexible approach to designing hybrid learning and teaching journeys, guided by questions of value and purpose.
While a consistent, templated approach is advocated for all modules on a particular programme to ensure students are able to easily navigate through modules without getting lost or having to adapt to different structures, the team also strongly believe that module personality and academic voice is crucial. These can be achieved by individual bespoke module maps and narratives to support learning. In addition, where face-to-face time is reduced, the use of narratives often replaces corridor chats and pre and post lecture conversations.
Supervision
Postgraduate research supervision
Christine supervises MSc and doctoral students in the area of business and management education, mindfulness and leadership.
Teaching
Christine leads and teaches on he Postgraduate Certificate in Management Education, which is aimed at practitioners, ECR and those without a valid or relevant teaching qualification in Management Education.
Christine has taught on all levels prior predominantly marketing, qualitative research methods and dissertation/ business model projects.
Publications
Highlights
Rivers, C. (2025). Mindfulness and Business Education, Developing self-aware future leaders - A practical guide. Routledge.
Mindfulness and Business Education: Developing self-aware future leaders is a practical guide for educators and academics with teaching responsibilities in business schools or colleges. Business schools have a responsibility to equip future leaders with the right knowledge and the right skills to make the right decisions, particularly in times of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity. This responsibility can only be met if business schools change the way they teach and develop self-aware future leaders who are grounded in the foundations of mindfulness.
The book is divided into three parts: Why, What, and How. Part One: Why introduces the foundations of mindfulness, draws on the history of business school development, and discusses leadership approaches presently taught in business schools. Part Two: What discusses ways of measuring mindfulness, the need for training business educators as mindfulness facilitators, and the contextualisation of mindfulness in contemporary business topics such as wellbeing, sustainability, diversity, and artificial intelligence. Part Three: How provides case studies and scripted resources for immediate use and implementation in extracurricular or co-curricular activities to design mindfulness-based modules and courses, to introduce mindfulness coaching as part of pastoral care and staff development, and to develop mindfulness-driven business education strategies.
This is an ideal book for those in business education looking to use mindfulness to develop future managers and leaders.
Available from Routledge or Amazon.
towards personalized responsive management education, Martin Fellenz, Sabine Hoidn & Mairead Brady (eds) The Future of Management Education (forth coming, Dec 2021), Routledge.