Dr Oliver Buckley
Salford Business School
University of Salford
The Crescent
Salford
M5 4WT
Current positions
Lecturer in Marketing
Biography
Oliver Buckley is a Lecturer in Marketing at Salford Business School, where his research examines the creator economy, encompassing the rapidly evolving world of influencer marketing, online content creation, and competitive video gaming. Oliver’s ongoing work focuses on the wellbeing of digital creators, the partnerships that form between brands and creators, and the growing influence of artificial intelligence technologies on creator autonomy and platform dynamics.
Drawing on his own background as a former gaming content creator on YouTube, Oliver brings an insider’s perspective to questions often studied from the outside. His doctoral research, based on depth interviews with professional Twitch streamers, surfaces the tensions underpinning live creative work online, including the pull between passion and precarity, the double-edged nature of online community, and the constant balancing act of sustaining wellbeing while performing for an audience in real time. This work sits alongside his California Management Review article (Buckley et al., 2025), which sets out a framework for understanding how livestreaming can enhance influencer marketing effectiveness.
Before joining Salford, Oliver was a researcher in the Oxford Future of Marketing Initiative at Saïd Business School, University of Oxford, contributing to Marketing2030, a large-scale research programme examining how senior marketing and business leaders are navigating the shifting marketing landscape amid key developments like agentic artificial intelligence. He completed his PhD in Management at the University of Liverpool in 2026. His earlier career in digital marketing continues to inform a research agenda at the nexus of academic theory and industry practice.
Areas of Research
digital transformation, strategy, creator economy, influencer marketing, livestreaming, video games, brand partnerships, digital culture
Qualifications
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PhD in Management
2021 - 2026 -
MSc Marketing
2020 - 2021 -
BA (Hons) English Language and Linguistics
2016 - 2019
Recognitions
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University of Liverpool Management School PGR Award for Research Excellence and Notable Contribution