31 January, 2025

Hi, I’m Akash Kumar Sharma – a migration researcher currently based in Cork, Ireland, and I'm delighted to be part of the Department of Marketing and International Business and the Hincks Centre for Entrepreneurship Excellence at MTU. I’m pursuing a PhD focused on immigrant entrepreneurship, exploring how migrant entrepreneurs navigate structural challenges and carve out space within local economies. Somewhere along the way, I became an accidental academic (still not sure how many degrees are too many), but I’ve always been drawn to stories of movement, resilience, and the quiet power of starting over.

My academic journey began with a Bachelor’s in Foreign Languages and Intercultural Studies in India, which sparked my interest in culture, communication, and identity. Before landing in Cork, I did a whirlwind Erasmus Mundus master’s in Transnational Migration across Brussels, Wroclaw, and Granada – a journey that taught me as much about borders, identity, and resilience as it did about airport security rules. Each city added a new lens to how I understand migration, and somewhere between chasing thesis deadlines and missing flights, I realised I wanted to turn lived experience into meaningful research.

At the Hincks Centre, I’m combining research with community engagement – learning from migrant entrepreneurs, mapping their journeys, and occasionally negotiating with transcription software that refuses to understand accents (including mine). It’s a privilege to be part of a centre that believes in the power of entrepreneurship to create more inclusive futures, and to be around people who are just as passionate (and coffee-fuelled) as I am.

Akash Kumar Sharma

PhD Candidate

Dept. of Marketing and International Business and the Hincks Centre for Entrepreneurship Excellence