Program Director Impact MBA & Executive MBA, Professor of Technology, Culture & Organization

Prof. Dr. Andrew B.R. Elliott

Andrew leads the Impact MBA in Sustainability, Innovation & Leadership and oversees program development across the MBA. His work spans media, technology and society, community-centered learning, and sustainable business, examining how organizations build the conditions for people to do their best work together.

Biography

Prof. Dr. Andrew B.R. Elliott is Professor of Technology, Culture and Organization, and the Program Director for Tomorrow University’s Impact MBA and Executive MBA. His career has followed a single organizing question: how do media, technology and community shape the way people work together on hard problems? Following his PhD at the University of Exeter he spent 13 years as a researcher, Lecturer and Associate Professor at the University of Lincoln, serving as Program Director and Director of Research, followed by several years as ESG Director at a multinational hotel group, where he co-founded Hotels with Heart, a registered charity embedding community-led sustainability into the hospitality sector. In 2024 he co-founded Blue Goat Books, an independent publisher where he serves as Commissioning Editor of the Beyond the Cubicle series exploring the future of work, including burnout, AI, leadership, purpose-led business, remote work and sustainability. His research spans digital games, immersive media, social media and participatory culture, examining how people build (and are excluded from) communities through shared stories and technologies. He brings that same question into the MBA: how do organizations build the conditions for people to do their best work together, and what does it look like when they get it right?

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Previously Worked At

University of Lincoln, University of Exeter, Hotels with Heart Foundation, Blue Goat Books

Research Profile

Prof. Dr. Andrew B.R. Elliott’s research sits at the intersection of digital media, participatory culture and community formation. His early work examined how screen media (film, television, and video games) shape collective memory and group identity, asking who gets to tell stories about the past and whose version of history sticks. His most-cited work, Playing with the Past (Bloomsbury, 2013), established a foundational framework for understanding games as participatory spaces where communities form around shared inquiry; Medievalism, Politics and Mass Media (Boydell & Brewer, 2017) extended this into contemporary political culture, analyzing how media instrumentalizes historical imagery to build in-groups, exclude outsiders, and legitimize present-day agendas. More recently his research moved into immersive and emerging technologies. His forthcoming book Invisible Worlds (Liverpool University Press, 2027), co-authored with Catherine Clarke and Victoria Flood and developed through an AHRC-funded project, examines how VR and AR technologies can support participatory mythmaking and community formation at Alderley Edge, using the National Trust site as a case study in how digital tools can reconnect people to shared cultural heritage. This strand connects directly to his practice-based research interests in community design, sustainable organizations, and the pedagogical potential of immersive and challenge-based learning. At Tomorrow University, his teaching and research evaluates the conditions under which communities and organizations sustain purposeful action, and how those conditions can be designed rather than left to chance.

Selected Publications

Books

Invisible Worlds: Legendary and Digital Enchantments at Alderley Edge, with Catherine Clarke and Victoria Flood (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, forthcoming February 2027). Examines how VR and AR technologies support participatory mythmaking and community formation, using the Alderley Edge National Trust site as a case study linking immersive digital media with cultural myth and community.

Medievalism, Politics and Mass Media: Appropriating the Middle Ages in the Twenty-First Century (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2017; paperback 2021). Analyzes how contemporary politics and mass media use historical memory to build communities, create in- and out-groups, and legitimize the present through the past.

Playing with the Past: Digital Games and the Simulation of History, edited with Matthew Wilhelm Kapell (New York: Bloomsbury, 2013). A foundational study of how games and historical play bring people together into participatory communities, from fan modding to subcultures.

The Return of the Epic Film: Genre, Aesthetics and History in the 21st Century (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2014). Analyzes the return to prominence of Epic films as a genre.

Remaking the Middle Ages: The Methods of Cinema and History in Portraying the Medieval World (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2011). Explores the semiotic and representational strategies which modern media use to depict the past.

Selected Essays and Articles

“Who Owns the Middle Ages? Participatory Medievalism and Structural Exclusion,” in Medievalism in Finland and Russia, ed. Reima Välimäki (New York: Bloomsbury, 2022). Examines how participatory cultures playing with history create mechanisms for structural exclusion.

“The Little Crusader Who Demanded His Country Back: Brexit, Crusades and the Daily Express,” in The Crusades and the Far Right in the 21st Century, ed. Charlotte Gauthier (London: Routledge, 2024). Analyzes media instrumentalization of historical narrative in Brexit coverage.

“#Medieval: Social Media and Participatory Medievalism,” in Middle Ages without Borders, ed. Yawn, di Carpegna Falconieri and Savy (Rome: Publications de l'École française de Rome, 2021).

“Internet Medievalism and the White Middle Ages,” History Compass (invited submission), 16.3 (2018).

“Simulations and Simulacra: History in Video Games,” Práticas da História 5 (2017).

For a full list of publications, see Andrew’s publications page.

Thesis Supervised

Title of the Thesis

First & Last Name

Impact Master of Science

Konrad joined Tomorrow University to pivot from corporate leadership into purpose-driven impact. Through the MBA, he deepened his expertise in tech and sustainability while gaining the confidence to embrace a new mission: amplifying change through strategy and storytelling. His journey includes launching the SDG Ambition Guide and producing films that inspire climate action.

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Teaching at Tomorrow University

Programs

Skills You Can Learn

Community and Organizational Design

Sustainable Business Strategy

ESG and Impact Measurement

Media, Technology and Society

Participatory Learning and Challenge-Based Pedagogy

Future of Work

Research Methods for Business Leaders

Purpose-Led Leadership

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