Overview

I am a member of the HRM and Law group within the Edinburgh Business School, at Heriot-Watt University, as well as a member of the Centre for Employment, Work and the Professions (CREWs).

I am a long-term Academic Member of the CIPD, a Fellow of the HE Academy, and member of BSA and BUIRA.

I have recently become Co-Director of Engagement within the School of Social Sciences.

My teaching role involves co-ordination of courses on Employment Relations (hons level), and Sustainable Human Resource Management (PGT MSc).

I was previously (2012-2022) the Research Ethics Officer in the School of Social Sciences, Chairing the University's Research Ethics Committee, 2017-2020.

Research

I am CI on the newly awarded EDI Caucas (EDICa) grant (£4.2m), acting as PI on the Organisation of Work workstream.

I was a Co-Investigator on the highly successful EPSRC funded Disability Inclusive Science Careers (DISC) project (£494k), a project leading to evidence-based training for managers of disabled STEM-based staff (contact me if you want to know more about such training).

A further research project I am currently PI on involves building a network to transform unions to represent the neurdivergent workforce (TURN) - see a recent press release detailing a first meeting of this network. The network and prospective research to build capacity in UK union to represent the neurodivergent workforce builds on a C17 REF2021 impact case study rated 4-star.

I am PI on a third research project (with Inspiring Scotland) (£13k), a project looking to take the lived experience of autism and employment, plus the lived experience of managing autistic employees, to extend Scotland's Fair Work Framework to include the autistic workforce.

A fourth project I lead on investigates the emergent practice of Leaveism (@Leavism) - one paper from the project (theorising leaveism) has recently been published in Human Resource Management Journal (open source), with a further paper on leaveism and well-being presented to the 40th International Labour Process Conference in Padua, Italy, 21-23 April 2022.

A fifth project (and further prospective impact case study) I am a PI on involves trade union organising responses to the balloting thresholds of the Trade Union Act 2016 - a paper was recently (2021) published on new and innovative organising skills in Personnel Review, a further paper extending such work was presented to BUIRA 2021 and the ILO's 7th Regulating for Decent Work conference, and is currently being prepared for submission to a high-ranking industrial relations journal.

Publications

My most recent publications involve leaveism (HRMJ), sustainable HRM (Employee Relations), disability inclusion in Malawi (Journal of International Development, managing leaky bodies in the workplace (Sociology of Health and Illness),  job quality and gig work (International Journal of HRM), trade union organising (Personnel Review), and socially irresponsible HRM (International Journal of HRM).

Doctorial supervision

I currently supervise eleven PhD/DBA students on the following topics: marketing of disability services to employees and employers, socially irresponsible HRM in the betting shop industry, chronic ill-health and academic careers, history and emergence of HRM, disability in professional working, autism and employment (3 students), industrial relations and corporate bias, coaching woment leaders in Pakistan, and trade union organising in Nigeria.

I have supervised PhD students to completion on the following topics: job quality and gig work, LGBTQ+ and academic work, work values in the third-sector, intersectionality and experiences of work for women Polish migrants, bi-polar disorder and the workplace, lived experiences of Nigerian line managers under strategic HRM, meaning of work in Sri Lanka, the labour process in the music industry, and, human resource management in the Chinese oil industry.

External roles

I was a member of the Editorial Board for Work, Employment and Society (2019-2023), External Examiner at the University Stirling on the MSc in HRM (2020-), and a currently a member of an advisory board, Disability Inclusive Remote and Hybrid Working, hosted at Lancaster University.

I am also an adhoc reviewier for the following journals: Culture and Organization; Cyberpsychology; Economic and Industrial Democracy; Employee Relations; Equality, Diversity and Inclusion; Organization; Human Relations; International Human Resource Management Journal; International Journal of Human Resources; Development and Management; International Perspective of Equality and Diversity; Journal of Human Resources Costing and Accounting; Journal of Management and Orgaization; Journal of Managerial Psychology; Journal of Marketing Management; Journal of Organisational Ethnography; International Journal of Retail Distribution Management; New Technology, Work and Employment; Personnel Review.