Dr Ghobadi earned her PhD in Information Systems from UNSW Australia (2008–2012), with a background in IT Management and Industrial Engineering. She developed a model explaining what shapes coopetition among cross-functional team members developing digital products, and how this coopetition can be managed to achieve high-quality knowledge sharing. Since 2020, Dr Ghobadi also serves as Associate Editor at the Information Systems Journal. She is also in the editorial board of the British Journal of Management and Journal of Strategic Information Systems. She has received research grants and awards from bodies such as the British Academy (2017), Australian Endeavour Executive Award (2014), Australian School of Business (2008-2011), and ASB Experimental Research Grant (2011).
In 2016, Dr Ghobadi joined Leeds University Business School, The University of Leeds as an associate professor and earned full professorship in 2023. She is now a Professor of Digital Organisation at the Management and Organisation Department. Her work contributes to understanding how organisations develop digital products and how groups and individuals organise online to encourage developers to be socially mindful of the impact of their
She employs qualitative interviews, surveys, virtual ethnography, and experimental methods, specialising in longitudinal case studies that theorise the growth of teams, startups, and organisations. Her work is grounded in industry experience spanning software entrepreneurship (2002), automobile manufacturing (2003–2006), and e-Science development (2011–2014). Dr Ghobadi's research has been published, or is forthcoming, in leading journals such as the Journal of the Association for Information Systems, Journal of Management Studies, British Journal of Management, Journal of Strategic Information Systems, Journal of Management Information Systems, Information Systems Journal, Information and Organization, Information and Management, Information Systems Frontiers, and Journal of Systems and Software.
From 2019 to 2025, Dr Ghobadi was Business School Academic Lead for Inclusive Education Practices (SALIP). She received a highly commended award in Business School Faculty Partnership Award in 2022 (Equality and Inclusion).
From 2015-2019, Dr Ghobadi worked at the University of Manchester, teaching system dynamics, system thinking, and digital trends in businesses. She received the Social Responsibility Award in Curriculum at the Faculty of Humanities.
She was a Visiting Scholar at J.Mack Robinson College of Business, Georgia State University, Atlanta in 2014.
Prior to academia, she worked full time in the automobile, eScience, and software industries in Asia and Australia as a system analyst, consultant, and project manager. This experience and ongoing research inspires her work.
She wrote the first System Dynamics book in Farsi in 2006 to share a topic she believed would be useful for others. Published by a premier local management publisher, it became a reference book in a series of local universities and helped professionals and students to apply systems thinking and modelling in research and industry.