Institute news

Read the latest news about our members and their achievements.

September 2025
Angel Martin Caballero was awarded an Early Career Fellowship with by The Leverhulme Trust and UoM. Angel’s project title is ‘The Digital Workplace: Rethinking Compliance, Regulatory Enforcement and Institutional Change’.

Ceri Hughes was awarded a three-year British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship, which she will start in January 2026. The project, titled ‘More or less: can low-wage workers benefit from voluntary working time initiatives?’, will examine how a voluntarist, firm-level approach to negotiating better working hours can disadvantage low-wage workers, and will consult with workers, unions and policymakers to understand how the working time concerns of low wage workers could be addressed more fully. In the meantime, Ceri has been awarded funding for an UMRI Interdisciplinary Research Placement and pilot project to support a learning exchange around participatory research.

July 2025
A number of institute members (staff and students) attended, presented and facilitated at the ILO Regulating for Decent Work Conference held in July 2025. Jill Rubery sat on the introductory panel for the conference where she outlined the link between the WEI and the RDW Conference and the significance of the conference in bringing together such a variety of scholars from the Global North and Global South.

November 2024
Jill Rubery delivered the Mary McAleese Diversity Lecture at Queen's University Belfast, titled ‘Beyond Gender Gaps: Why We Need More Egalitarian Labour Markets to Achieve Gender Equality.’ Drawing on her extensive experience with the European Commission and International Labour Organisation, Jill offered valuable insights into the complex challenges women continue to face in the labour market.

October 2024
Julie Froud participated as an expert on a panel at a practitioner workshop on the value of the Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) sector hosted by the Decent Work and the City project at the Work and Equalities Institute, in collaboration with the Greater Manchester Combined Authority’s School Readiness project. Special thanks were given to Ceri Hughes, Mat Johnson, Angel Martin Caballero, and Eva Herman for facilitating the discussions.

January 2024
Saleema Kauser was invited to participate in a panel discussion at the British Academy Wellcome Trust Symposium. The panel was on inequalities experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic, a topic that aligns closely with her ongoing research. She presented her findings on the specific challenges faced by South Asian women working in the NHS during the pandemic.

December 2023
Jill Rubery took part in a panel event: Changes in working patterns and practices and productivity in North West firms, which was hosted by the North West Productivity Forum, as part of National Productivity Week. There is an article about the event, and a full feature will be available in the January issue of North West Business Insider.

November 2023
Jill Rubery took part in a Women@Manchester Seminar: Flexible working and gender equity, discussing her research on Flexible Working and Gender Equity following the recent government ruling on requesting flexible working from day one of employment.

October 2023
Isabelle Swinglehurst-Bi has been awarded a twelve-month ESRC Postdoctoral Fellowship. The fellowship is based on her PhD research on consumer credit and is focussed on publications and impact with limited new research. The new research plans to emphasize specifically consumer credit  pressures of working households and extends her research an additional two years to include the time leading into Covid-19.

September 2023
A new report from work and employment group ReWAGE says that remote working is here to stay, but for those able to work remotely there are many unresolved issues that need to be addressed. The report, The future of flexible working, sets out the current and potential problems with flexible working, as well as considering the benefits that it can bring. Jill Rubery was the report's lead author; other authors included Professor Alan Felstead and Dr. Helen Blakely from Cardiff University, and Dr. Emily Erickson from the University of Warwick. ReWAGE is an independent expert advisory group which analyses the latest work and employment research to advise the government on tackling current challenges facing the UK’s productivity and prosperity.

August 2023
Saleema Kauser was awarded £10,000 from the British Academy/Leverhulme Small Research Grant for her project Exploring Microaggressive Behaviours in the NHS: Experiences, Strategies, and Cultural Contexts.

The Productivity Institute awarded David Holman a grant for his project The complex effects of job complexity on skill use and well-being, and its implications for productivity. This is a one year project starting in April 2024.

July 2023
A number of Institute members attended and presented at the ILO Regulating for Decent Work conference in July 2023. Jill Rubery chaired a plenary session 'How to revalue work and ensure decent working conditions'.  The session was recorded and is available for download here.

At the BUIRA 2023 Conference, Anne McBride was recognised as a Fellow of the British Industrial Relations Association (BUIRA). This was in recognition of her substantial and outstanding contribution to the area of equality and diversity in employment relations in four specific domains: Theoretical development of gender democracy in trade unions; empirical work on employment relations and skills development in the healthcare sector; leadership in EDI employment standards; and theoretical development of intersectionality in industrial relations. Anne joins Miguel Martinez Lucio, who was awarded a Fellowship last year.

In May 2023 in the House of Commons debate for the second reading of the Employment Relations (Flexible Working) Bill, Selaine Saxby MP made reference to the ReWAGE Flexible Working Report, written by Jill Rubery. ReWAGE is an independent expert advisory group modelled on SAGE that is co-chaired by the Universities of Warwick and Leeds. It analyses the latest work and employment research to advise the government on addressing the challenges facing the UK’s productivity and prosperity, such as Covid-19, the cost-of-living crisis and labour shortages.

Influencing international and national employment policies to promote inclusive labour markets.
Research from the Work and Equalities Institute has provided an evidence base that has had a major impact at the national and international level, informing employment debates and policies, reported Alliance Manchester Business School in September. Extensive comparative analyses of legal and collective interventions that promote inclusive labour markets have influenced the thinking and policies of international policymaking bodies including the European Parliament and the ILO; national policy actors such as the Greek government and South African policy makers; and international trade union organisations including the European Trade Union Institute (ETUI)and European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC).

Ceri Hughes was awarded a University research collaboration grant, Softly, softly? Understanding how local employment charters attempt to regulate good work. The project, in collaboration with the Greater Manchester Combined Authority, will identify the potential mechanisms through which employment charters can promote good work within and between firms. This requires an inter-disciplinary approach, drawing in particular on the fields of industrial relations, human resource management, political economy and social policy.

In September 2022, Anthony Rafferty, Managing Director of the Work and Equalities Institute, was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA) . He was invited after collaborating with the RSA on basic income.

In July 2022, Tony Dundon, Adrian Wilkinson and Peter Ackers published their article Mapping employee involvement and participation in institutional context: Mick Marchington's applied pluralist contributions to human resource management research methods, theory and policy in Human Resource Management. The paper examines how the work of Mick Marchington integrated older forms of employee participation with newer patterns of employee involvement.
Dundon, T. Wilkinson, A. Ackers, P. (2022) Mapping Employee Involvement and Participation (EIP) in institutional context: Mick Marchington's applied pluralist contributions to Human Resource Management (HRM) research methods, theory and policy. London Human Resource Management Journal. https://doi.org/10.1111/1748-8583.12461

In 2022, Ceri Hughes was awarded a small grant from the University Research Collaboration Fund to support the development of scoping work around local employment charters.