Professor Jonathan Roberts

Jonathan Roberts is Teaching Director and Professor at the Marshall Institute. He leads the development of teaching activities at the Institute, where he has designed and developed the ground-breaking executive MSc programme in Social Business and Entrepreneurship (from 2018) and a Marshall Institute specialism within LSE’s Master of Public Administration programme, the MPA in Social Impact. He has received multiple teaching awards from LSE.

Jonathan holds a PhD from the Department of Social Policy at LSE, for which he received the Titmuss prize. He has taught and lectured at LSE on behavioural public policy, on social enterprise and on the relationship between government and the voluntary sector. He has also been a Teaching Fellow at the School of Public Policy, UCL, where he taught nonprofit and voluntary sector policy and management. He is a classicist by training, having received a BA (Hons) in Classics from the University of Cambridge. Prior to joining LSE he worked for a number of UK charities, a set of experiences which raised significant questions about the challenges and opportunities of private action for public benefit and which stimulated his academic teaching and research.

Jonathan’s research interests include hybrid organisations, motivations and altruism, and the role of social enterprises and mutual organisations in public service delivery. He has a particular interest in education, pre-school and family policy. His doctoral research explored how parents trust pre-school childcare provision. He is currently researching hybrid organisations and innovative funding mechanisms for social enterprises and community businesses. His work has been published in social policy, education, sociology and public administration journals.

The Marshall Institute and the Institute of Philanthropy (IoP) have formed a strategic research partnership, undertaking comparative research across five major global financial hubs to understand how philanthropy supports economic growth and social impact. The study will investigate the relationship between philanthropic capital, financial institutions and government policy across five financial centres: Abu Dhabi, London, Hong Kong, New York, and Singapore.

With particular focus on emerging Asian philanthropy, the research addresses how financial infrastructure, regulation, and incentives intersect with philanthropic action. The study examines how these hubs - where concentrated wealth meets growing demand for inclusive impact - can serve as engines for social investment, innovation, and cross-sector collaboration.

A research study of the Marshall Institute in collaboration with the School of Social Entrepreneurs.

Match Trading is an innovative grant-making mechanism, created and implemented by the School of Social Entrepreneurs (SSE) in the UK, that seeks to improve the self-reliance and trading capacity of community businesses. The project examines Match Trading, an innovative funding model that combines matched grants with business development support to help community businesses and social enterprises grow their trading income and become more financially resilient and explores how increased commercial revenue influences the behaviour, decision-making and resilience of these organisations, while assessing the effectiveness of Match Trading as a funding mechanism and its implications for policy and practice.