James is the Director of the Whitaker Institute  and is a senior lecturer in Strategic Management at the J.E. Cairnes School of Business & Economics. The Whitaker Institute is the largest scale critical mass business and social sciences research institute on island of Ireland.  He previously held the positions as the Executive MBA Programme Director and the Head of the Strategy Group at School of Business & Economics at NUI Galway. Prior to joining NUI, Galway James held a lecturing position in the Michael Smurfit Graduate School of Business at University College Dublin. Prior to this James worked as a strategy consultant. 

His main research interests focus on strategy issues with respect to university research commercialisation, technology transfer, academic entrepreneurship as well as strategy as practice. He has published extensively on these areas of research.  His publications include books, book chapters, journal papers, case studies and refereed conference papers. James has delivered key note presentations, acted as session chair and facilitator at national and international academic and practitioner conferences, as well as delivering executive master classes on strategy development.  Awards for his research include three best paper awards at the British Academy of Management Annual Conferences (2002, 2005 and 2010),  a best paper award at Technology Transfer Society Annual Conference 2011, a best paper award at the Irish Academy of Management Conference (2003) and his co-authored case studies have won national and international competitions. He was co-editor of the Irish Journal of Management a 1* ranked journal an the Associated Business School journal ranking list. He has also completed commissioned reports, acted as mentor for start-up businesses and in 2002 held a visiting Professorship at the Department of Management and Organization at Penn State University.

James has published five co-authored books. His research on technology transfer has been cited in the Irish Government’s major science strategy, Strategy for Science Innovation and Technology published in 2006. His co-authored book entitled the Strategic Management of Technology Transfer: A New Challenge on Campus  was described in a Business and Finance review as: “This book should be part of the policy library our entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and top manager in ICT and R&D oriented sectors.” His  co-edited book entitled Irish Management 2.0: New Managerial Priorities in a Changing Economy combined articles, case studies and management reflections from a range of academics and practitioners which provided a compelling commentary on the future of Irish management practice and business education.

His latest book publication Strategy and Strategists which was published by Oxford University Press in March 2012.  Dr Philip Stiles of the Judge business School, University of Cambridge describes this book" as a much-needed antidote to many highly perspective and superficial discussion of how strategy works.' Forthcoming journal papers in the Journal of Technology Transfer and Long Range Planning focus on entrepreneurial universities, commercialization of publicly funded principal investigators, strategic planning activities in technology transfer offices and technology entrepreneurs.