Dr Ellen Touchstone

Ellen is a Senior Associate Professor of Practice in the Department of Intelligent Operations and Marketing and is currently serving as the inaugural Associate Dean for Responsible and Sustainable Business Education at the International Business School Suzhou (IBSS) at XJTLU. Ellen previously served as the Director of Internationalisation of the Business School as well as the Programme Director of its Chinese National Top Tier Undergraduate Programme, International Business with a Language. She received her MBA in International Business from ASU Thunderbird School of Global Management and her PhD in Applied Linguistics from the University of Southern California. In addition to IBSS, she recently taught at the Asian University for Women in Bangladesh as a Visiting Professor in their MSc Apparel and Retail Management programme.

She is currently conducting research on ¡°nudging¡± consumers to choose more sustainable alternatives. She is a thought leader on inclusive banking with her research on the linguistic servicescape and multilingual advertising published in the Journal of Business Research (ABS3, IF: 11.3), the Journal of Consumer Research (FT50, IF: 8.61) among others.

Under her leadership, IBSS has been designated the first and only Champion business school in China by the Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME) organisation of the UN Global Compact. The carbon reduction initiative she launched with the Sustainable Future Talents student group, “Fifteen Ways in Fifteen Weeks” won the AMBA BGA Best CSR & Sustainability Initiative 2022 award as well as Third Prize at the 13th RCE Global Forum in 2023.