Dr Melissa Marques McEwan

Assistant Professor

Dr Melissa Marques McEwan is an Assistant Professor in Sustainable and Circular Businesses at Heriot-Watt University. Her research focusses on understanding how businesses can take advantage of reuse, sharing, remanufacturing, and recycling to increase their performance and competitive advantage. Since the start of her PhD at Edinburgh Business School in 2019, Melissa has collaborated with dozens of organisations in funded projects by the Scottish Institute of Remanufacturing and UKRI.

She regularly presents in academic conferences, and industry-focused events, conferences, and workshops. She is also a member of the UKRI-funded Interdisciplinary Centre for Circular Chemical Economy, where she contributes to research investigating how moving to a circular economy impacts businesses and what interventions in the wider system are required to accelerate the transition in the chemical sector. Her teaching interests and expertise are on circular economy, business performance, and systems thinking.

Areas of interest

• Circular Economy, Sustainability, Business Performance, Systems Thinking

Qualifications

• BEng Manufacturing Engineering, Federal University of Sao Carlos, Brazil (2017)
• MSc Managing Business Performance (Distinction), Heriot-Watt University (2018)
• Associate Fellowship to AdvanceHE (AFHEA) (2021)
• PhD Management, Heriot-Watt University (2022)
   

Background

Melissa has started her career at Procter & Gamble in Sao Paulo, in the strategic procurement team responsible for facilities and waste recovery services for several manufacturing plants in Latin America. This experience served as inspiration for her to pursue her Masters and PhD.

Her academic career is shaped by the belief that teaching and research can change practice for better. Therefore, she regularly collaborates with a range of organisations through research and academic consultancy projects. Recent collaborations included the design of a plastic reduction strategy with a major school wear retailer, and a systems analysis of reuse and recycling in offshore decommissioning in the UK.