Profile Picture Dr. Kristen N. Marshall © Kristen Marshall 2025
  • EH14 4AS

    United Kingdom

Accepting PhD Students

20192024

Research activity per year

Personal profile

Profile Summary

Kristen joined Heriot-Watt as Assistant Professor in Digital Marketing in 2022. She graduated with a BA (Hons) Design from York University and Sheridan College’s joint degree in Toronto, Canada in 2006 and moved to Edinburgh in 2007.

 

In 2013, Kristen graduated from Edinburgh Napier University with an MBA and later accepted a position as a Graduate Teaching Assistant at Napier. In 2017 she was awarded a PG Certificate in Teaching and Learning in Higher Education whilst attaining Fellowship of the HEA. Her doctoral research, ‘Beyond the Digital Foodscape: Scottish-based foodies’ use of social media influencers to explore and chose food’ was submitted for Viva in 2023, with the Doctor of Philosophy conferred that year.

 

Research interests

Social media is an influential and prominent presence in modern lives. It not only connects us to one another, it also influences consumers while shaping identities and cultures. Kristen’s doctoral research applied critical consumer culture theory and complex food choice models to examine how Foodies – those who are passionate about food – use influencers to explore and negotiate their food values, strategies and identities.

 

Kristen’s research interests are focused on the influence of social media in general and influencers in particular. She is also a keen foodie and has co-authored papers around Beer mavenism in Colombia and attitudes towards Green Food labels in East China.

 

Current developing interests include how social media influences health care decisions for women – particularly how women are self-diagnosing as perimenopausal based on the social media content they see, and the implications of this to GP referrals. This has implications not only for women’s health as social media content can often contain misinformation. Whilst empowering patients to advocate for their own care can bring positive benefits, time pressures at GP appointments and the combination of questionable quality of information and limited patient knowledge (assuming patients have no medical training) carry risks to the quality of patient care which warrants further exploration.

 

Within the classroom, Kristen is currently exploring how Marketing education can successfully and critically embed AI as an employable skill. Within Higher Education there are numerous debates around student use of AI in assessment, but these tend to focus on preventing and detecting academic misconduct. Meanwhile, the marketing profession is coming to grips with how AI can be used in day-to-day activities and AI has been highlighted as an emerging skill in the employment market. It is therefore critical we move beyond (whilst retaining) scepticism and embrace critical exploration.

Roles & Responsibilities

Kristen has taught across a plethora of courses and range of subjects within Marketing including marketing ethics, sustainable marketing, strategic global marketing, experiential marketing, digital marketing, marketing communications, marketing metrics, introduction to marketing and more. She has acted a Programme Director at both Undergraduate and Postgraduate levels and has supervised dissertation students in the UK and abroad. She has designed and delivered courses on campus, with hybrid delivery and online.

 

Within Heriot-Watt, Kristen is currently acting as Global Course Co-ordinator for several courses including Marketing Metrics, Social Media Marketing and the Undergraduate Marketing Dissertation. Kristen is keen to embed employability throughout the entire student experience and regularly arranges for Guest speakers, Live briefs and extracurricular activities (e.g. CV workshops) with and through professional networks.

 

Kristen is also involved in academic leadership and citizenship in her role as Chair of Boards of Examiners. She is also active in several special interest groups across the University. Most recently, Kristen has joined Heriot-Watt’s INSPIRE cohort to pursue Senior Fellowship of the HEA.

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