Personal statement

I joined the University of Strathclyde in 2010 as Professor of Work and Employment Relations.  I was appointed Distinguished Professor in 2019.  My research and teaching expertise is in the study of work and the management of the employment relationship. To illustrate, my published work includes topics such as workplace innovation; improving job quality; skills implication of automation; workplace learning, including union-led learning; skills and skills valuation; employer-employee partnerships. My research is funded by a variety of organisations including the ESRC, ERDF, the Technology Strategy Board, government, public, private and third sector organisations.

I am also the Director of the Scottish Centre for Employment Research (SCER) which aims to inform academic, policy and practice debates on work and employment. Building on our previous Innovating Works initiative, SCER has worked closely in recent years with multiple stakeholders in a project aimed at Harnessing Knowledge, Research and Networks to drive Fair, Innovative and Transformative Work (FITwork) in Scotland, funded by Scottish Government, Scottish Enterprise, Highlands and Islands Enterprise, Skills Development Scotland and the Scottish Funding Council and supported by STUC. in addition, SCER has delivered a series of industry facing Workplace Innovation Masterclasses in conjunction with Scottish Enterprise and is leading an evaluation of Community Pharmacy Technology Pilots in conjunction with Scottish Government and NHS Scotland.  With Lindsay, I recently worked with the Joseph Rowntree Foundation on research analysing employers' roles in addressing in-work poverty. 

I currently lead a research team of colleagues from SCER, the Fraser of Allender Institute and Global Public Health at Strathclyde University and from Eindhoven University and the Erasmus University in the Netherlands on an £861k ESRC funded project on ‘Improving management practices, work engagement and workplace innovation for productivity and wellbeing’.

I am currently the Co-Chair of Scotland’s Fair Work Convention (since 2017) having previously been a member of, and Academic Adviser to, the Convention, since its inception.  I was previously a member of the Scottish Government Review Group - Working Together: Progressive Workplace Policies in Scotland.  I am also a member of the Scottish Government's Innovation Forum; the SG Gender Pay Action Plan Steering Group; and the SG Human Trafficking and Exploitation Strategic Oversight Group.

I currently sit as a member of SCDI’s Productivity Club and am a member of the Scottish Apprenticeship Advisory Board’s Gender Commission.

I am a member of the Economic and Social Research Council Peer Review College and previously of the ESRC Future Research Leaders SIFT panel.  I am a member of the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland Review Panel.  I sit on the Editorial Board of the Industrial Relations Journal, having previously been a board member of the journal Work, Employment and Society.  I have a long-standing association with, and have co-organised, the International Labour Process Conference and have organised streams at the Society for the Advancement of Socio Economics (SASE) Conference.  I am a member of the British Universities Industrial Relations Association, the British Sociological Association and SASE. I am also a long-standing member of the Employment Tribunals Service and sit on the Steering Group of the Scottish Living Wage Campaign and the Advisory Group to the Oxfam Decent Work Project, having previously sat on the Steering Group of the Oxfam Scotland Humankind Index.  

A key part of my role at SCER is to support the activities and career development of SCER’s researchers and doctoral students attached to SCER projects.