Professor Susan Lewis
Suzan (Sue) Lewis is the coordinator of this ESRC seminar series. She is Professor of Organisational Psychology at Middlesex University Business School. Her long standing research focuses on gender and “work-life balance” issues and workplace practice, culture and change, in diverse national contexts. She has led many national and international research projects on these topics and is currently leading an international review of research on maternity protection in SMEs for the ILO. Sue has worked with employers and policy makers on work-life issues in Europe, Asia and North America and has been a member of an EU expert group on women in science, engineering and technology. Her publications include numerous articles and books on gender and work-life issues. She is a founding editor of the international journal Community, Work and Family, and Chair of the Richard Benjamin Trust which awards grants to early career researchers in social and organizational psychology.
Dr Nicky Payne
Nicola Payne is a Health Psychologist and Director of the MSc Health Psychology at Middlesex University where she is a Principal Lecturer. Her primary research interests are within the field of occupational health psychology. These include work-life balance, occupational stress, the impact of work on health behaviours and behaviour change interventions. Current research focuses on the impact of the recession on the work-life balance agenda in the public sector, work-life balance and health in fire service personnel, and research on the experiences of and supports for combining work and using assisted reproductive technology. She has been a member of the conference committees for the British Psychological Society’s (BPS) Division of Occupational Psychology and the European Academy of Occupational Health Psychology, and has held a number of positions in the BPS Division of Health Psychology.
Dr Clare Lyonette
Clare Lyonette is a Senior Research Fellow at the Warwick Institute for Employment Research. Before joining the IER, she worked at City University, London, on a range of research projects relating to employment and the family, as well as a project within the ESRC Gender Equality Network (www.genet.ac.uk). Since joining the Institute in 2009, she has undertaken research in a range of areas, including the Quality Part-time Work Fund pilot project evaluation and a current project on the higher education and labour market experiences of student mothers. Her other interests include work and careers, gender roles, work and health, including work-life conflict and stress. She regularly employs mixed methods in her research and has published widely in her field of expertise.
Dr Deirdre Anderson
Deirdre Anderson is Director of the Executive MBA and a Senior Lecturer in Organizational Behaviour in the International Centre for Women Leaders at Cranfield School of Management. She spent over 15 years as an independent business psychology consultant before taking up academic research and teaching. Research interests include flexibility, work and family, gendered careers and diversity and inclusion. She has published in peer reviewed journals, as well as contributing several book chapters on flexible working and work life balance, women’s career choices and women only leadership development. Deirdre is a member of the British Psychological Society, the British Academy of Management and the Work and Families Researchers network.
Mr Jonathan Swan
Jonathan Swan is Policy and Research Officer for Working Families. He has researched and written on a wide range of work-life integration issues, including: fathers and work, flexible working in senior roles, productivity and performance, organisational culture and active ageing. He is responsible for the annual Top Employers for Working Families benchmark for organisations and the Time Health and the Family series of reports.
Professor Colette Fagan
Colette Fagan is Professor of Sociology and Deputy Dean of the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Manchester, UK. Her research focuses on the field of employment and public policy with particular interests in gender inequalities and gender mainstreaming; working conditions and job quality; working-time (and time-use more broadly); and international comparative analysis. She is the UK national academic expert in the European Commission’s Expert Network on Employment and Gender Equality (ENEGE) and a member of the Eurofound Advisory Committee on Working Conditions. Her other engagements as an academic consultant to the policy community include research reports for the European Commission, Eurofound, the European Parliament, the European Trade Union Institute, the International Labour Office and the OECD. For further details please see:
http://www.manchester.ac.uk/research/Colette.fagan
Professor Stephen Wood
Stephen Wood is Professor of Management, Director of Research Income and Enterprise, School of Management, University of Leicester and is an Academician of the British Academy of Social Science. He was previously Deputy Director and Research Chair at the Institute of Work Psychology, University of Sheffield and Co-Director of the ESRC Centre for Organisation and Innovation. His research has included pioneering work on developing measures of organisational work-life practices and assessing their use and effects. He was a member of the Workplace Employment Relations Survey 2011 research team, and is a co-author of its main output: Employment Relations in the Shadow of Recession (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013). Stephen has provided policy advice to a range of organisations, public and private, and contributed to public life in a number of ways. For example he was Chair of the Management Board of the Health and Safety Commission’s Workers Safety Adviser Challenge Fund, 2004-7 and a member of the Employment Task Group for the 2004 Health White Paper on the impact of the post–1997 Employment Relations Legislation for the DTI.
Dr Roberta Guerrina
Roberta Guerrina is Reader in Politics and Head of the School of Politics at the University of Surrey. She is a European policy analyst with a particular interest in European social policy, citizenship policy and gender equality. She has published in the area of women’s human rights, work-life balance, identity politics and the idea of Europe. She is author of Mothering the Union: Gender Politics in the EU (Manchester University Press, 2005) and Europe: History, Ideas and Ideologies (Arnold, 2002).
Professor Nicole Busby
Nicole Busby is Professor of Labour Law and Director of the Centre for Employment and Labour Law Studies at the Strathclyde law School. Her research focuses on the effect of legal interventions on individuals’ working lives. She is currently considering the gendered impacts of law’s relationship with paid work and unpaid care, particularly in times of austerity. She is also exploring how labour rights might be given guaranteed status under constitutional law. Nicole Bushby is co-founder of the AHRC-funded Families and Work Network (FAWN) which aims to explore law’s engagement in the quest for work / family reconciliation through interdisciplinary thinking about the linkages between government policies and everyday experiences, theories and practices, law and society (see http://www.reading.ac.uk/fawn/). She is also a partner in ‘New Sites of legal Consciousness: Citizens Advice Bureaux and Employment Disputes’ (PI: Professor Morag McDermont, University of Bristol), funded by the European Research Council, which is investigating the experiences of claimants in the Employment Tribunal system.
Professor Grace James
Grace James is a Professor of Law at the University of Reading, where she is currently Director of Research and teaches Employment and Discrimination Law. The main focus of her research has been pregnancy-related discrimination and carer rights at work – and she has published widely in this field. She is co-director (with Nicole Busby above) of the AHRC-funded Families and Work Network (FAWN): see http://www.reading.ac.uk/fawn/
BPS Divisional of Occupational Psychology Work Life Balance Working Group Partners
Professor Gail Kinman
Gail is Professor of Occupational Health Psychology at the University of Bedfordshire. She co-chairs the British Psychological Society’s Work-life Balance Working Group which communicates evidence-based practice to organisations and employees. Gail has a long-standing research interest in occupational health psychology, with a particular focus on the work-life balance and wellbeing of people who work in emotional demanding professions. She is currently involved in research projects at a national level with various occupational groups such as nurses, academic employees, prison officers, police, and fire and rescue service personnel. Other recent research has investigated specific emotional experiences such as crying at work, and the work-life balance of couples that do similar jobs. Gail is currently working with health and social care professionals to investigate the factors that underpin emotional resilience to stress and will be publishing a book on this topic (with Palgrave McMillan) in 2014. She is a member of the Executive Committee of the European Academy of Occupational Health Psychology and is Associate Editor for Interviews for the BPS Psychologist magazine.
Dr Almuth McDowall
After a successful career in health and fitness, Almuth retrained in psychology. She combines an academic post at the University of Surrey, where she is Course Director for the MSc in Occupational and Organisational Psychology, with freelance work as an independent practitioner across the public and private sector. Her research and practice interests are work-life balance, with particular focus on self-management competence, the assessment of performance and coaching. She has a particular interest in conducting research with the UK police, and is currently leading two research projects to undertake Rapid Evidence Assessments for the College of Policing. Almuth has published on relevant topics in the academic and in the practitioner press, and is a regular speaker at national and international conferences. Her research continues to be featured in the opular press, including Grazia Magazine, the Financial Times and the Sunday Times Magazine. She co-chairs the British Psychological Society’s Work-life Balance Working Group.