Heather is Academic Dean, Faculty of Business & Law, at Coventry University and a Senior Research Fellow at the Global Policy Institute. She is an active researcher and consultant with expertise in international business, finance and logistics where she has long been involved in maritime policy development. She acted as Specialist Adviser to the ‘House of Commons Select Committee for Transport on the Inquiry into the future of UK ports’. More recently she has been involved in a number of European Commission for projects which examine the role of water freight transport in the EU member states.

She was Director of the ‘Centre for International Transport Management’ at London Metropolitan University from 2003 before becoming Head of Consultancy for the ‘Global Policy Institute’ in 2008. During that time she established and was Director of the government funded agency ‘Sea and Water’. She is currently Editor-in-Chief of the leading academic maritime journal ‘Maritime Policy and Management’ and retains a close affiliation with the Hong Kong Polytechnic University where she is external adviser to the Department of Logistics and Maritime Transport. Heather is also Senior Warden of The Worshipful Company of World Traders.

Selected Publications

Fearon, C., Starr, S. and McLaughlin, H. (2012) Blended learning in Higher Education (HE): conceptualising key strategic issues within a Business School. Development and Learning in Organizations: An International Journal (forthcoming).

Hancock, J., Fearon, C., McLaughlin, H. and Fielden, B. (2012) Policing the ‘Drugs Intervention Programme’ (DIP): an exploratory study of the Southern UK Policing Region. Policing: A Journal of Policy and Practice (forthcoming).

McLaughlin, H. (2011) Shipping finance. In: Alderton, P., ed. Reeds Sea Transport: Operations and Economics. 6th ed. London, UK: Adlard Coles Nautical. pp. 167-175.

McLaughlin, H. and Rodrigues, O. (2010) Do shipping mergers and acquisitions add corporate value? In: (Elgar, E., ed.) The International Handbook of Maritime Economics and Business. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar. pp. 268-282.

McLaughlin, H. (2010) Promoting short sea shipping as part of the logistics chain, in Applied Transport Economics: A Management and Policy Perspective (Van de Voorde, E. and Vanelslander, T., eds.). De Boeck. pp. 89-104.