Dr Shing Kwan (Avis) Tam is an Assistant Professor in Leadership at Birmingham Business School. Her academic work focuses on leadership development, leader identity, future identity, gender and leadership, and human resource management. She was awarded her PhD in Business & Management by Warwick Business School with no corrections. Her doctoral research developed the concept of Leader Future Work Self and examined how future leader identity, leadership prototypes and gender shape leadership development motivation and outcomes.
Before joining the University of Birmingham, Dr Tam was a Lecturer in Human Resource Management at Coventry University London, where she taught leadership, international HRM, entrepreneurship and innovation, and sustainability and corporate social responsibility to undergraduate and postgraduate students. She also contributed to module leadership, curriculum development, assessment design, academic conduct work, international quality assurance and dissertation supervision. Her teaching has been recognised through the Coventry University London Teaching Excellence - Outstanding New Academic award.
Dr Tam previously worked for over a decade in international HRM, leadership development and talent management roles across Asia Pacific and Europe. Her professional experience spans luxury and lifestyle retail, fashion retail, engineering, manufacturing and sourcing, and public-sector HR contexts. Across these sectors, she designed and delivered leadership development, talent management, assessment centre, succession planning, coaching, management training and career development initiatives. This industry background informs her research-led and practice-oriented teaching, particularly in helping students connect leadership theory with reflective practice, employability and contemporary organisational challenges.
She is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and holds a PgCAPP with Distinction, a Level 7 Academic Professional (Teaching) Apprenticeship with Distinction, an MSc in Human Resource Management from the University of Birmingham, and a BA from the University of Hong Kong.