The Centre for Research in Equality and Diversity (CRED) at Queen Mary, University of London, was established in 2005 and is a prominent international research centre at the leading edge of equality and diversity research.
CRED is committed to critical scholarship in researching equality and diversity and seeks to be guided by principles of social justice and inclusivity. In the contemporary political and economic context, research on equality, inequalities and diversity is vital to advance theoretical understanding and to appraise the impact of contemporary public policies internationally and nationally, and both at the level of the organization and the individual. Our work questions taken-for-granted ideas and solutions in the equality, diversity and inclusion space and sheds light on neglected aspects of equality, as well as persistent inequalities.
CRED’s research is interdisciplinary and draws on sociology, psychology, organisational behaviour, economics, and industrial relations. Key areas of expertise include: diversity management (equality, diversity & inclusion policies, practices and actors); women leaders, women on boards and women’s careers; gender pay gap and income inequalities; sexuality and gender identity at work; race, ethnicity, migration, and anti-racist organising; intersectionality, inequalities and privilege; trade unions, community organising and activism for change; labour force and occupational regulation.
CRED’s research is international and comparative with completed projects on both developed and developing countries/regions: e.g. China, Germany, France, Nigeria, Norway, Pakistan, Romania, Sri Lanka, South Africa, Taiwan, Turkey, UK, US, Latin America, Middle East, and South Asia. CRED researchers have built strong links with international universities and institutions.
CRED undertakes research that has an impact on equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) policy and practice in a wide range of employment and organisational settings, including private organisations (e.g. FTSE listed corporations and SMEs), trade unions, public sector and non-profit organisations (e.g. NHS), as well as national and transnational policymakers and regulators (e.g. Government Equalities Office, European Commission). Recent impactful projects include research on gender and ethnicity on corporate boards and in leadership, contributing to UK government policy on addressing gender and ethnic under-representation on boards (Hampton-Alexander and Parker Reviews); and research into the equality impacts of privatisation of the UK probation service, the future of women’s work in public transport worldwide, and union organising strategies to address the casualisation of women’s work.
The Centre for Research in Equality and Diversity was established in 2005
For further information, please contact the Co-Directors of CRED - Maria Adamson and Elena Doldor by emailing cred@qmul.ac.uk
Follow us on Twitter @QMUL_CRED
Dr Maria Adamson
CRED Co-Director and Senior Lecturer in Organisation Studies
Maria Adamson is a critical scholar with an interdisciplinary background and interests in sociology of work, gender and critical management studies. Her research focus is on the exploration of the socio-cultural basis of gender workplace inequality, exploring professions and professional work, and bringing feminist theorising into management and organisation studies. Her previous research projects have explored the role of gender in professions and critically explored the quality of inclusion in organisations, applying postfeminist lens to understand contemporary gendered inequalities in the workplace. Her recent project focuses on exploring the role and impact of business celebrities on work and organisations. Maria’s work has been published in world-leading journals including Human Relations, Sociology, British Journal of Management, Gender Work and Organisation and she has recently completed an ESRC-funded project on Gendered Inclusion in Contemporary Organisations. She is also a co-Editor of Work Employment and Society journal.
Dr Elena Doldor
CRED Co-Director and Reader in Organizational Behaviour
Elena’s research focuses on the careers and leadership journeys of women and ethnic minorities in organizations. Her work investigates causes for the underrepresentation of women and ethnic minorities in senior leadership (e.g. corporate boards, professional services firms) and strategies for change; gender exclusion in board recruitment processes and in the work of head-hunters; power, organizational politics, and the gendered and racialised experiences employees have when learning how to navigate workplace politics; and factors influencing the career progression of women and ethnic minorities in organizations, such as identity construction among Black, Asian and Ethnic Minority consultants in professional services firms, and stigma management among highly skilled Romanian professionals in the UK. Elena engages regularly with policy-makers and organizations seeking to diversify their leadership ranks and create more inclusive workplaces. Her annual Female FTSE Board Reports have informed national policies (Davies review on Women on Boards, Hampton-Alexander review on Women Leaders) that have led to an increased representation of women on boards. Elena is a member of the Government’s Equalities Office Work and Gender Equality (WAGE) Network, where she has contributed to policy events and employer webinars.
Dr Patrizia Kokot-Blamey
Senior Lecturer in Organisation Studies
Patrizia’s research interests are in gender at work. In her current research, she seeks to better understand the experiences of women undergoing IVF while working. Her broader research interests focus on motherhood, breastfeeding and women’s bodies at work. She has a particular interest in the accounting profession, comparatively and historically, and women’s careers in Professional Service Firms (PSFs). Her past research focused on the careers of women who made partnership in PSFs in Germany and the United Kingdom and to examine the challenges women experiences on the way to partnership from a feminist perspective.
Dr Andromachi Athanasopoulou
Head of Department, People & Organisations and Senior Lecturer in Organisational Behaviour
Andromachi Athanasopoulou is the Head of the People & Organisations department and Senior Lecturer in Organisational Behaviour at the School of Business and Management. She is also Associate Fellow, Executive Education at the Saïd Business School, University of Oxford and Visiting Associate Professor in Organisational Behaviour at the London Business School. Her areas of expertise are leadership (including gender and leadership and CEO studies), corporate social responsibility and ethics. Andromachi has published peer-reviewed academic papers in these fields and a book on executive coaching for the Oxford University Press. She is an editorial board member at the Journal of Change Management. Andromachi previously held appointments as a research fellow at the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University and at the University of Oxford. She has an MBA, MSc and DPhil in Management from the Saïd Business School, University of Oxford.
Professor Sanghamitra Bandyopadhyay
Professor in Economics
Sanghamitra Bandyopadhyay specialises in the economics of growth and development, measurement of inequality, poverty and mobility and applied econometrics, with a specific focus on Asia and Africa. Her theoretical work has dealt with measurement issues in income convergence and mobility, and applied work deals with institutional barriers to economic development. She has held previous academic appointments at the University of Oxford, University of Birmingham and the London School of Economics and was Visiting Professor/Fellow at the Toulouse School of Economics and Cornell University. She holds a PhD from the London School of Economics and is currently the guest editor for Research on Economic Inequality.
Professor Rob Briner
Professor of Organisational Psychology
Rob Briner is Professor of Organizational Psychology in the School of Business and Management. He conducts research into several areas of organizational psychology and HR such as work and well-being, the psychological contract, work-nonwork relationships and ethnicity. In addition, he is very active in developing evidence-based practice in management, HR and organizational psychology.
Dr Ishani Chandrasekara
Reader in Accounting; Programme Director for BSc Accountancy (Flying Start)
Ishani Chandrasekara's research interests are in the field of Critical Accounting and Finance with a particular focus on the presence of a feminine narrative in response to the phallocentric culture that has defined women's subjectivity in the Western philosophy of management. Her doctoral research investigates subaltern knowledge of finance and accounting. In particular, she is interested in the way women in Sri Lanka, in local organisations, develop alternative understandings of finance and accounting, and how both international finance, and large NGOs' seek to convert these women into globalised financial subjects by disregarding this subaltern knowledge. At present Ishani works with the Centre for Women’s Research on the impact of austerity measures on locally based women organisations in Sri Lanka.
Professor Nelarine Cornelius
Professor of Organisation Studies
Nelarine Cornelius holds research interests in equality, diversity and inclusion in the UK and emerging, fragile economies, and international comparisons of policy and practices. Much of her work employs Sen’s capabilities approach in organisations and for community development. Current projects include the emergence of EDI practices in Pakistan and Nigeria; diversity practices and senior management progression in FTSE 250 companies, the role of social organisations in addressing EDI and theoretical critique of diversity practices and EDI policy and practice in public sector organisations. Her work in this area has been funded by HEIF, CIPD, British Academy, British Academy of Management and ESRC. She is also a member of the diversity impact working group for the Chartered Association of Business Schools, and has advised on EDI policy and practice to many public, private and social sector organisations.
Dr Sadhvi Dar
Reader in Interdisciplinary Management and Organisation Studies
Sadhvi Dar holds a Diploma in Art and Design, a BSc in Psychology and a PhD in Management Studies. Her research investigates the juncture between measurement and culture, and contributes to current understandings in organization studies about accountability, reporting and processes of knowledge production. Theoretically, Sadhvi finds inspiration in postcolonial studies, social philosophy and psychoanalytic approaches, however, she also has an interest in post-structural theory more broadly. Her empirical work is diverse, ranging from critiques of NGO management, international development, mental health organizations and arts organizations. Sadhvi has expertise in ethnography, archival research, discourse / narrative approaches, cross-cultural analysis and interviewing.
Professor Tessa Wright
Professor of Employment Relations
Tessa's research focuses on equality and discrimination at work, covering gender, sexuality and intersectionality, with a particular interest in male-dominated occupations. Before entering academia, Tessa worked for many years as a researcher and writer for the trade union movement, which shaped her interests in strategies for advancing equality at work, including in trade unions and through public procurement. She has published three books: Moore, S, Wright, T. and Taylor, P. (2018) Fighting Fire: One hundred years of the Fire Brigades Union, Oxford: New Internationalist; Wright, T. (2016) Gender and sexuality in male-dominated occupations: women workers in construction and transport, Palgrave Macmillan; and Wright, T. and Conley, H. (eds) (2011) Gower Handbook of Discrimination at Work (2011).
Dr Claudine Grisard
Lecturer in Accounting
Claudine’s research broadly considers the links between accounting and politics, to understand the constitutive role that accounting plays in sustaining current politico-economical systems, but as well in the struggles engaged by groups resisting these systems. Her research covers a variety of fields such as post-colonial or labour struggles contexts.
Professor Geraldine Healy
Emerita Professor of Employment Relations
Geraldine Healy has extensive experience of researching equality and inequalities in organisational and international settings. She is currently researching the gender pay gap (GPG) in the financial services sector and in universities. Her work in 2016-17 includes The Challenges of Organising Women Casualised Workers TUC) ‘Close the Deal, Fill the Gap’ (for EU) a comparative study of the GPG in Italy, Poland and the UK, member of CMI/BAM research advisory group on BAME leadership. She had published widely in leading journals and her recent books include: Gender and Union Leadership, Routledge 2013 (with Gill Kirton), Diversity, Ethnicity, Migration and Work: International Perspectives, 2011, Palgrave Macmillan (with Franklin Oikelome). Forthcoming edited books are Gender and the Professions and The Gender Pay Gap and Social Partnership (both Routledge).
Professor Gill Kirton
Gill Kirton has been conducting research on equality, diversity and inclusion at work for around 20 years. Her research has investigated different stakeholder perspectives on the development and implementation of diversity management in UK organizations. Another strand of her research explores women's participation in unions and unions’ gender and race equality strategies. One recent project explored the gender and union effects of restructuring/outsourcing of a public service within the context of a professional occupation. Gill Kirton’s work is published in journals such as British Journal of Industrial Relations, Gender, Work and Organization, Human Resource Management Journal, Human Relations, International Journal of Human Resource Management, Work, Employment and Society. Gill is an Associate Editor of Human Resource Management Journal and of Gender, Work and Organization.
Dr Maria Koumenta
Senior Lecturer in Work and Labour Market Analysis
Maria Koumenta’s research activities are in the fields of labour economics, labour market policy and employment relations. Her work explores the characteristics and prevalence of various forms of occupational regulation, analyses their impact on labour market outcomes such as wages, skills and employment, and compares it to other labour market institutions such as unionism. She has recently been involved in a research project funded by the UK Commission for Employment and Skills investigating occupational regulation in the UK (with John Forth-NIESR, Amy Humphries-LSE, Alex Bryson-NIESR and Morris Kleiner- University of Minnesota). Additionally, Maria is interested in public sector labour market policy and the management of employees in the public services.
Dr Tana Licsandru
Lecturer in Marketing
Tana's main research interests lie in the broad area of transformative consumer research, with particular focus on multicultural marketplaces, ethnic marketing communications and vulnerable consumers' inclusion in diverse societies. Tana’s research is multi-disciplinary, lying at the intersection of marketing, public policy and socio-psychology, and advocates for the transformative power of marketing to elevate the voices of under- and mis-represented consumers and bring about positive social change for individual and collective wellbeing. Her recent work proposes a set of public policy development strategies in the fields of marketing practice, education and research that legitimise and institutionalise the Diversity & Inclusion agenda in Marketing. Tana’s work has been published in the Journal of Business Research and the Journal of Public Policy & Marketing and presented at various international conferences.
Dr Ulrike Marx
Ulrike joined Queen Mary in 2022, having previously worked at University of Leicester, University of Essex, University of Innsbruck (Austria) and Berlin School of Economics and Law (Germany). Her diploma degree was in the area of Accounting, followed by a PhD in Management Accounting. Her PhD research took a governmentality perspective on gender budgeting, describing the emergence of gender budgeting as well as the translation of gender budgeting initiatives into practice. More recently, she conducts research into the areas of accounting for wellbeing, the accounting profession, social accounting and feminism.
Dr Patrick McGurk
Reader in Management Practice; Associate Dean, Education
Patrick leads on undergraduate curriculum development projects, student skills- and career-development and employer engagement for the School of Business and Management. He was previously Head of Human Resources and Organisational Behaviour at the University of Greenwich and has several years of experience of management education for corporate clients across multiple sectors in the UK and Germany. At QMUL, Patrick teaches various modules concerned with leadership and management practice at undergraduate and postgraduate levels.
Dr Chris McLachlan
Lecturer in Human Resource Management
Chris’ research explores the consequences of deindustrialization and organisational restructuring for affected workers and communities, along with the associated industrial relations processes. His doctoral research focused on responsible approaches to restructuring in the UK steel industry, examining the different forms of institutional support aimed at ameliorating the negative effects for workers. His research has generated insights into the experiences of displaced workers, the role of trade unions in restructuring processes and management strategies.
Professor Mike Noon
Dean of the School of Business and Management; Professor of Human Resource Management
Mike Noon's main research focuses on workplace equality and diversity, including employee experiences, management initiatives, and local and national policy. His publications critically question what might be considered ‘mainstream’ approaches to the challenges of equality, such as the business case, managing diversity and positive action initiatives, and he advocates taking a more progressive stance. He has been invited to present his ideas to various equality forums including the Government Equality Office, the Higher Education Leadership Foundation, the Equality Challenge Unit, the Metropolitan Police Service and the College of Policing. He has published in leading academic journals, has co-edited two research books, and co-authored two successful textbooks.
Dr Mustafa Ozturk
Reader in Human Resource Management
Mustafa Bilgehan Ozturk is Lecturer in Management in the School of Business and Management at Queen Mary University of London. Mustafa’s research focuses on workplace equality and inclusion, with particular reference to gender, sexual orientation and gender identity minorities. His empirical work has often an international focus, and he has been involved in research projects addressing diversity challenges emanating from the Chinese, Turkish, US and UK contexts. His academic work has appeared in a range of leading management journals, such as British Journal of Management, Human Relations, Human Resource Management, and International Journal of Human Resource Management. He has also contributed to key edited volumes in his field, published by Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press and Routledge among others.
Professor Ahu Tatli
Professor of International Human Resource Management
Ahu Tatli conducts research on intersectionality of disadvantage and privilege at work; inequality and discrimination in recruitment and employment; diversity management, agency and change in organizations. Ahu’s research contributed to the advancement of knowledge on EDI at work culminating in over 100 journal and conference papers. She has widely published in edited collections, practitioner and policy outlets and international peer-reviewed journals such as Academy of Management Review, British Journal of Management, European Journal of Industrial Relations, Human Relations, Human Resource Management, International Business Review, International Journal of Human Resource Management, and International Journal of Management Reviews. Her recent books include Global Diversity Management: an evidence-based approach (2015, Palgrave) and Pierre Bourdieu, Organisation and Management (2015, Routledge).
Dr Suki Sian
Head of Department of Accounting and Financial Management
The main theme of Dr Suki Sian's work has been exclusion from and marginalisation within the accounting profession. She has studied historical race-based and caste-based exclusion from the accounting profession in specific colonial settings. More recently, She has been involved in two projects examining gender-based marginalisation. The first of these looks at the experiences of women auditors in large audit firms in Saudi Arabia. The second study examines a returnship programme for women accountants wishing to re-enter the accounting profession post career-break.
Professor Mark Williams
Professor of Human Resource Management
Professor Mark Williams specialises in mapping socio-economic disparities in the labour market using large-scale survey and administrative data. He regularly engages in consultancy and advisory work for government, trade unions, and professional bodies, both in the UK and internationally. Recent completed projects include a review on the gender pay gap in the medical profession for the Department of Health and Social Care and the production of two pay claims and gender pay gap analyses for a large public sector trade union. His latest project, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, explores disparities in the quality of working life across occupational groups to help inform the development of official statistics and government policy on the issue.
Dr Katarina Zajacova
I am an Associate Lecturer and a Researcher of Organisational Diversity, Gender and Organisational Behaviour at the Queen Mary University of London, School of Business and Management. Before joining Queen Mary, I worked as a Teaching and Research Fellow and a Business Consultant at the Roffey Park Institute. I obtained my PhD at the University of Surrey and I have an MSc from Queen Mary University of London.
My research examines the link between gender, ethnicity, social class and migration patterns. I am particularly interested in the development of national, gender and other types of stereotypes in organisational settings and their impact on organisational behaviour.
My PhD focused on the intersection of gender, social class, age and nationality on migration experiences of Eastern and Central European domestic workers in the UK and the nature of precarious work. My expertise in gender, migration and social equality has been utilised whilst working on several research projects at the London School of Economics (LSE), University College London (UCL), and the Centre for Research on Nationalism, Ethnicity and Multiculturalism (CRONEM) at the University of Roehampton.
In my various consultancy roles, I worked with numerous Private and Public Sector organisations, delivering executive leadership, Organisational Development (OD) and management programmes. Some of my work focused on business interventions addressing the EDI (Equality, Diversity and Inclusion) policies, but also the implementation of Organisational Change and its impact on people and organisational processes. Some of the clients include organisations such as the KPMG, Civil Service, NHS, Jisc, HEFCE, Freshfields Law Firm and several British Universities. I am a qualitative researcher; I am also qualified in several psychometric assessment tools and business coaching techniques. I am an advocate of applied learning and in my pedagogical approach, I utilise the combination of my academic and practitioner experience.
Dr Joyce Mamode
Joyce’s research interests centre around the role of employee and other stakeholder voices in influencing equality policy and practice in organisations; and theories of equality and fairness. She is currently working with Professor Tessa Wright on academic outputs arising from the ESRC funded Buying Social Justice Through Procurement Project. Joyce was previously the project’s post-doctoral research assistant. The project explored the use of procurement by public bodies to promote equality in the UK construction workforce. The project’s academic outputs aim to contribute to theory and knowledge arising from the potential for public procurement to be used as a lever for achieving equality, diversity and inclusion.
Joyce is in the process of finalising a number of publications arising from her doctoral research which examined the contribution being made by trade union equality representatives to union modernisation. She also contributes to the work of the Runnymede Trust, a leading race equality think tank, as a Research Associate. Joyce completed her PhD part-time at Warwick Business School, whilst working as TfL’s Head of Assisted Transport. Joyce holds an MSc in Occupational Psychology from Birkbeck College (University of London) and a BSc in Psychology from Newcastle University.
Before joining TfL, Joyce was a researcher for a major trade union (the Transport and General Workers’ Union, now part of Unite).
Dr Emily Pfefer
Teaching Fellow
Emily recently completed her PhD in CRED, entitled: The Silence of Transparency: A Critical Analysis of the Relationship between the Organisational Salary Environment and the Gender and Gender/Ethnic Pay Gap in UK Higher Education. She is a mixed-methods researcher, with qualitative experience using NVIVO for thematic analysis, quantitative experience using SPSS, and survey experience using the Qualtrics platform. She is currently working on a collaborative paper analysing the gender pay gap in UK universities and developing work for publication from her thesis.
Professor Sarah Riley
CRED Visiting Professor 2020/2021
Sarah is a Professor in Critical Health Psychology, located in psychology, but drawing on sociology, cultural and media studies to explore the psychological impact of neoliberalism, addressing questions of gender, embodiment, health, youth culture and citizenship. She has been funded by the EU, ESRC, EPSRC, British Academy, Canadian Social Sciences and Research Council and charities. Her work includes the co-authored books Critical Bodies (Palgrave, 2008), Technologies of Sexiness (Oxford University Press, USA, 2014) and Postfeminism & Health (Routledge, 2018). She is currently writing Postfeminism & Body Image (Routledge), and is the Vice-Chair for the International Society for Critical Health Psychology.
Professor Cathrine Seierstad
Cathrine Seierstad is a Professor of Organisation and Leadership at the University of South-Eastern, Norway. She obtained her PhD from Queen Mary University of London and held lectureship positions at Queen Mary, University of Sussex and University of Brunel. Her research is inter-disciplinary and located within the fields of business and leadership and sociology of work with a particular focus on diversity and inclusion in organizations, HRM, corporate governance, women on corporate boards and the use of quotas to increase diversity. Her research spans multiple levels, including micro (individual), meso (organizational) and macro (national) levels. The overarching theme, which is visible in the different fields and foci of analysis, is that of diversity and inclusion. In producing and disseminating her research, Cathrine collaborates with practitioners, organizations and policymakers. She has published in journals of recognized international excellence such as Human Resource Management Journal; Work, Employment and Society; Journal of Business Ethics; and Gender, Work and Organization and edited multiple books on the topics of women on boards and diversity in organizations.
Dr Chidozie Umeh
Lecturer in Human Resource Management, University of York
Chidozie Umeh is a Lecturer in Human Resource Management and Programme Leader for MSc HRM at the York Management School. He was previously a Teaching Fellow at the school of Business and Management, Queen Mary University of London. He holds a Postgraduate Diploma in Business Research methods (with distinction) from the University of Bradford, a Postgraduate Certificate in learning and teaching in higher education (with distinction) from Queen Mary University of London, an MSc in Human Resource Management from Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen, and a PhD in Business and Management from Queen Mary University of London. He is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA) and an Associate of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (ACIPD). Before joining academia, Dr Umeh had over 14 years of industry experience, including over a decade in the retail banking sector.
Dr Mark Bergfeld
Mark Bergfeld completed his PhD on immigrant worker organizing at Queen Mary’s School of Business and Management in 2018. He currently is the Director Property Services & Care at the European office of the global trade union federation UNI Global Union (Europa). Amongst others, he manages different organizing campaigns, especially in Central Eastern Europe; coordinates the trade unions in European Works Councils; and develops projects to strengthen trade unions in labour-intensive sectors. He continues to write for numerous publications.
Dr Ioanna Lupu
Ioana Lupu is an Associate Professor in Accounting at ESSEC Business School in France. Prior to joining ESSEC, Dr Ioana Lupu was a Lecturer in Management Control at Queen Mary University London and a Marie Curie Senior Research Fellow at Cass Business School, Centre for the Study of Professional Service Firms working on an EU funded project. She is the author of one book based on her PhD dissertation: “Carrières de femmes. Identité, socialisation et vie familiale dans les cabinets d’audit et d’expertise“ [Women’s careers. Identiy, Socialization and family life in the accounting firms], Vuibert Editions, Paris (2014).
Her work received commendations such as: Faculty Transnational Research Best Conference Paper Award, Best Conference Paper Based on a Dissertation Award, and Best Paper by a Transnational Student Award (Academy of Management, 2012, 2013). Ioana's papers are published in Organization Studies, Human Relations, Harvard Business Review, Critical Perspectives on Accounting and Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal.
Currently, Ioana is working on projects exploring control, identity, temporal experiences, body and compulsive behaviours in knowledge-intensive firms (audit and law firms). More recently, she examines how the COVID-19 pandemic shapes work in audit firms and hospital settings.
PhD students make up an important constituency of CRED. You can see a list of all current CRED PhD students under the 'PhD' tab on this page.
CRED academics undertake critical multi-disciplinary research in the following key areas:
CRED research has been published in leading journals of the field, such as: Academy of Management Learning & Education; British Journal of Industrial Relations; British Journal of Management; Work, Employment and Society; Harvard Business Review; Human Relations; Human Resource Management Journal; Industrial Relations Journal; Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology; Journal of Organizational Behavior; Leadership Quarterly; Organization; and Sociology. In addition, CRED research has been published in books, book chapters, policy reports and other media. Since 2014, scholarly outputs by CRED members include over 60 peer reviewed journal articles, books, and book chapters.
Recent funded research projects. CRED researchers have secured grants from a range of funding bodies including: ESRC, Leverhulme Foundation, Nuffield, British Academy and the European Union. In addition, CRED researchers have gained grants from organisations such as Advisory Conciliation and Arbitration Service (ACAS), BBC, Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD), Chartered Management Institute (CMI), the Department of Health and Social Care, Accounting Association, Feminist Review, South Africa’s National Research Foundation, the TUC, the International Transport Workers Federation and several other trade unions.
Examples of recent and ongoing funded research projects by CRED researchers since 2014 include:
Book Launch: Highly Discriminating: Why the City Isn't Fair and Diversity Doesn't Work
This event is co-organised with the Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences (IHSS) at Queen Mary University of London. Dr Louise Ashley is IHSS fellow.
October 13, 2022, 6:00 PM - 7:30 PM (Online)
CRED webinar - ‘Addressing Race at Work’
May 28 2021, 12-1pm UK time
Watch the event recording here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbw8qmWa0yY
The Centre for Research in Equality and Diversity (CRED) at the School of Business and Management, Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) is delighted to host this event on ‘Addressing Race at Work’.
The pandemic, the murder of George Floyd, and the Black Lives Matter movement have spotlighted the racial inequalities that persist in our societies and institutions. The recent Sewell report has done little to address convincingly these racial inequalities in Britain. How can employers move beyond awareness and statements of support for racial equality, to really tackle racial inequalities at work in a meaningful way?Join our expert panel for a thought-provoking conversation that explored:
Panel members include:
The panel discussion was moderated by Dr Elena Doldor, Associate Professor in Organisational Behaviour and Co-Director of CRED.This event was open to academics and practitioners (D&I experts, senior leaders, policymakers) in the equality, diversity, and inclusion field.
CRED workshop - How to be an effective reviewer? Professor Ahu Tatli & Dr Andie Athanasopoulou
18 March 2021, 9-10.15am
Internal event open to CRED staff and doctoral students only.
Abstract: Getting involved in the peer review process can be a highly rewarding experience that can improve your own scholarship and help to further your academic career. Despite this being the ‘bread and butter’ of the scholarly publication process, there is no formal training on how to become a reviewer and most academics learn by doing it. During this workshop, our CRED award-winning reviewers Ahu and Andie will share their experience and their top tips for how to be an effective reviewer. Their reviewing efforts have won them several Best Reviewer Awards from prestigious management journals such as the British Journal of Management and the Academy of Management Learning & Education.
CRED webinar - Postfeminist healthism: Sex, Motherhood and the Daily Mail Comments sectionProfessor Sarah Riley
31 March 2021, 9-10am UK time
Abstract: In this talk, Professor Riley describes some of the main elements of postfeminist sensibility, both historically and how it manifests today. This overview highlights a focus on sexuality as a source of women’s power, an affirmative turn towards body positivity and traditional gender roles, and new visibilities of feminist activism which manifest against a backdrop of networked misogyny. Building on this, she then examines three figures illuminated within postfeminism: the sexual connoisseur, the intensive mother, and the loser feminist. Describing the studies in which these figures emerged, including an analysis of Daily Mail comments on her research, Professor Riley considers the implications of postfeminism for health and organisational inequalities that intersect along axes of gender, race and class.
Speaker: Sarah Riley is a Professor in Critical Health Psychology at Massey University, New Zealand and a Visiting Professor in the Centre for Research in Equality and Diversity at Queen Mary University of London. Located in psychology, she also draws on sociology, cultural and media studies to explore the psychological impact of neoliberalism, addressing questions of gender, health, and citizenship. She has been funded by the EU, ESRC, EPSRC, British Academy, and the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. Her work includes the co-authored books Critical Bodies (Palgrave, 2008), Technologies of Sexiness (Oxford University Press, USA, 2014) and Postfeminism & Health (Routledge, 2018); she is currently working on Postfeminism & Body Image (Routledge), and is the Vice-Chair for the International Society for Critical Health Psychology.
CRED webinar - Working arrangements and COVID-19: Employee preferences and employer responses in Australia Professor Marian Baird
20 April 2021, 9.30am-10.45am UK time
Abstract: The COVID-19 lockdowns in Australia forced a change in work and care arrangements which also catalysed public discussion about gender relations in the home and at work. This presentation assesses the many studies conducted during the pandemic of female and male working time preferences, and employer responses. Results show that both employee and employer preferences for all forms of flexible working arrangements increased, but there is less agreement about flexibility preferences for the future, how working time, workplaces and the gender contract will be re-shaped, or how new work arrangements should be regulated.
Speaker: Marian Baird AO (BEc (Hons) DipEd PhD Sydney, FASSA) is Professor of Gender and Employment Relations, Head of the Discipline of Work and Organisational Studies and Co-Director of the Women and Work Research Group in the University of Sydney Business School. She is a Presiding Pro-Chancellor of the University of Sydney, a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia, and a member of the APEC Study Centre Board at RMIT. In 2016 Marian was awarded an AO for outstanding services to improving the quality of women’s working lives and for contributions to tertiary education. Marian has won numerous grants from business and governments to study parental leave in Australia, gender equitable organisational change, women and economic development, and work and family policy. She has contributed to government advisory boards and enquiries relating to parental leave, gender equity and sexual harassment in the workplace. Her current research topics are reproductive leave arrangements, and mature workers and care. She is a Chief Investigator on The Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence on Population Ageing Research (CEPAR).
CRED webinar: “Does widespread homeworking offer equality benefits or entrench inequality?”
8 December 2020
Enormous numbers of people have experienced working at home for the first time as a result of the COVID-19 restrictions. Equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) advocates have long called for a variety of flexible working arrangements, including homeworking, to broaden employment opportunities for disadvantaged labour market groups. Therefore, this period of altered work practices has forced employers in sectors previously resistant to flexible or homeworking to introduce change, possibly leading to long‐term alterations that benefit working parents, carers or disabled workers, for example. On the other hand, many studies have highlighted the additional labour of childcare and home-schooling undertaken by working women while schools were closed. Furthermore, as periods of homeworking are extended and become the norm for increasing numbers of workers, there are serious concerns about the impact of social isolation on workers’ mental health, as well as questions of staff management, workload and performance monitoring that may have consequences for equality and inclusion.This CRED webinar open to academic and non-academic audiences was attended by over 100 people. The event brought together new academic research on the topic, with views from key actors in the word of work:• Dr Suki Sian, Queen Mary, University of London, New experiences of homeworking in the auditing profession• Prof. Abigail Marks, University of Stirling, Findings from the Working @Home project• Claire McCartney, Senior Policy Adviser, Resourcing and Inclusion, View from the Chartered Institute of Personnel Development (CIPD)• Natasha Owusu, TUC Policy and Campaigns Support Officer, View from the trade unions
A summary of key issues discussed during the webinar can be found here:
https://www.qmul.ac.uk/busman/newsandevents/general/items/cred-blog-series-widespread-expansion-of-homeworking-reveals-inequalities-in-access-and-quality-of-work.html
The full recording of the webinar is available to watch here: Does widespread homeworking offer equality benefits or entrench inequality?
CRED workshop: “Discourse Analysis”, Professor Sarah Riley
23 November 2020
This workshop was hosted for CRED faculty and doctoral researchers and provided participants with some of the core concepts of discourse analysis as used in psychology and social sciences. It considered the historical context through which discourse analysis emerges, and its epistemological underpinnings. Two forms of discourse analysis were introduced: Foucauldian-informed discourse analysis (also known as poststructuralist discourse analysis) and Discursive Psychology. Their key principles and analytics were explained with examples from previous research. Foucauldian-informed discourse analysis was explored on some data provided; the example illustrated how these analytics can been applied to thinking about contemporary gender issues.
CRED webinar: “Publishing in Gender, Work and Organization journal” – with Professor Patricia Lewis, Visiting CRED Scholar.
30 March 2020
This workshop was offered to all CRED researchers (faculty and doctoral students) interested in publishing in Gender, Work and Organization [ABS 3* journal], and in grappling with the publication process more broadly. Prof Lewis (Editor-in-Chief of the journal) provided an overview of the editorial policy and shared her wider experience and advice on how to navigate the publishing process. The workshop ended with a lively Q&A session in which CRED scholars raised queries about their different aspects of publishing (e.g. gaging fit with a journal, handling ‘revise & resubmits’).
CRED PhD webinar: “Using qualitative methods in doctoral research on equality & diversity” – with Professor Patricia Lewis, Visiting CRED Scholar.
24 March 2020
This workshop focused on using interviews as a qualitative research method in equality and diversity research, tackling in particular how to use interviews from different epistemological perspectives. The webinar was opened to CRED doctoral students at all PhD stages. Doctoral students had an opportunity to discuss questions and challenges related to the use of interviews in their own PhD research (from choosing a research design relying on interviews, preparing the fieldwork and devising interview protocols, to collecting or analysing interview data).
CRED Annual Lecture (part of a two-day series of events set up in partnership with Building the Anti-Racist Classroom Collective (BARC))
25-26 October 2019.
The two-day series of events have been designed as an intervention against the systems of white power that structure our places of learning. We ask: what does it mean to build an anti-racist classroom? What worlds should we be imagining and building in spite of the violence that surrounds us? Inspired by the work of Building the Anti Racist Classroom Collective, this event asks participants to build ethical principles that will inform our organizing. All of the sessions will feed into digital and print resources that will be made available after the event.
Given that these conversations are taking place in the shadow of Brexit, at a university located in East London, we must ask: why now and why here? The question of Brexit has been informed by a nostalgia for Britain as Empire and a desire to harden borders. We also know that Brexit is just one of several national contexts of increased violence and uncertainty for those positioned outside of deathly border regimes, as these borders manifest at everyday, local, national and international scales. In times of explicit racist violence, we refuse to wait for “progress” within inherently violent systems. This workshop is an opportunity to collaborate in community and imagine our future in a principled space; centering people of colour, our knowledge and methodologies for survival.
Equal Pay at 50, in partnership with the Equality Trust
5th November 2019, 11 am-5pm.
In the wake of the 50th anniversary of the 1970 Equal Pay Act, Queen Mary's Centre for Research in Equality and Diversity (CRED) is hosting an event on 5 November 2019 to explore ways of ‘making equal and fair pay a reality’. 5 November is particularly timely as it is close to the 2019 Equal Pay Day, after which women effectively work for nothing. In 2017, as a means to close the pay gap, the UK Government introduced annual mandatory gender pay gap reporting for companies of 250+ employees and, after two annual rounds of reporting, it is clear that for some organisations transparency is not sufficient and further radical change needs to take place. Equally, the UK Government’s Women and Equality Committee is arguing for further changes with respect toEnforcing the Equality Act. We are also seeing greater concern expressed at the lack of information and action on the ethnicity pay gap[ii], including a Government consultation on ethnicity pay reporting.[iii] A further challenge lies in understanding the intersectional nature of unequal pay. Our event will engage with these and other issues relevant to making equal and fair pay a reality.
We have a great range of speakers already confirmed. Carrie Gracie (BBC) and Professor Liz Schafer (RHUL), will be speaking on their personal experiences of fighting for equal pay. Insights on the equal pay context and strategies and practices for closing the pay gaps will be shared by speakers from a number of organisations including Business in the Community (Sandra Kerr), PwC (Anne Hurst), Equality Trust (Dr Wanda Wyporska), UnitetheUnion (Diana Holland), EHRC (Rebecca Thomas), Institute for Employment Studies (Duncan Brown), Emma Webster (Yesslaw) and academics (Professor Jeff Frank, Dr Cecile Guillaume and Emily Pfefer). Do join us and share your experience to what is bound to be a stimulating and interactive day that will make a real contribution to ‘Making equal and fair pay a reality’.
CRED@GWO 2020
CRED Members will be co-organising five streams at next year’s GWO conference at the University of Kent.
The deadline for submission of abstracts was Friday 1st November 2019.
Stream No. 6 Inequalities and discriminations in the restructured public sector: exacerbation or reshaping?
Stream No. 24 Gender, Diversity, Work and Transport
Stream No. 26 Transforming Transparency? The Strength and Limitations of Voluntary and Regulative Approaches to Transparency in the Context of the Gender Pay Gap
Stream No. 29 Gender in Political Spaces
Stream No. 32 Women on Boards and in Senior Leadership: Exploring Change Strategies Within International Contexts
CRED has long stressed the need for impactful research, which is reflected in collaborations with NGOs, public bodies, trade unions, corporations and professional organisations. Examples include: Chartered Management Institute, Chartered Association of Business Schools, British Academy of Management (Cornelius); Local authority child services (Dar); Professional Women’s Network Romania, KPMG, Barclays (Doldor); TUC, UCU, UNITE, (Healy); Napo, Royal College of Midwives, Royal College of Nursing (Kirton); European Commission (Koumenta, Martins); Department for Business Innovation and Skills (Cornelius, Koumenta); Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (Tatli), Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (Tatli, Williams); Fire Brigades Union, TSSA, Network Rail (Wright). CRED researchers regularly contribute to and influence policy-maker and practitioner conversations on a range of issues including underrepresentation of women and black, Asian and minority ethnic people on corporate boards and in organisational leadership; women in gender segregated occupations; workplace diversity management. The high profile of CRED’s work is also evidenced by regular media coverage of members’ research in outlets such as: The Guardian, The Financial Times, the BBC, BBC Radio 4, BBC World Service, LBC Radio, CNN, HR Magazine, The Conversation.
Some recent examples of impactful research by CRED members include:
Research by Doldor shaped UK national policy on women on boards (WoB). Her annual Female FTSE Board Report (with Vinnicombe and Sealy) investigated causes for women’s under-representation on FTSE 350 boards and interventions for improving gender balance on boards. The reports included studies on inclusive talent management (2014), the use of voluntary gender targets (2016, 2020), and the leadership trajectories of senior directors (2018). Her research also critically examined the role of headhunters in making board appointment processes more gender-inclusive (2016) and the possibilities and limits of voluntary strategies for gender equality on boards promoted by national reviews (2017). Other research (with Wyatt and Silvester, 2019, 2020) revealed that 360 feedback used in leadership development provides different developmental tracks for men and women: women are advised to develop leadership skills that make them effective in middle management roles, but that not conducive to progression towards senior leadership roles.
Doldor’s research was consistently cited by Davies (2011-2015) and Hampton-Alexander (2015-2020) reviews and has influenced these national policies by providing insights into senior women’s career obstacles and by supporting the case for voluntary gender targets on boards and below. The reviews recommended and led to the widespread adoption of voluntary gender targets on FTSE350 boards and below, substantially improving gender balance in corporate leadership. From 2013-2020, the share of women on boards increased from 17.3% to 34.5% across FTSE100; across FTSE 350, 350+ new female directors were appointed and all-male boards dropped from 74 to 1. Doldor’s research is also used by employers seeking to gender balance leadership pipelines. She was invited (2018-2019) to provide input at Government Equalities Office policy events and into their “Women’s Progression in the Workplace” employer toolkit; and to host a webinar attended by 177 employers, 53% of whom stated that they are likely to change their diversity practices based on Doldor’s research insights.
Another stream of research (with Atewologun, Wyatt, and Maharaj) focused on ethnic diversity in leadership within a Big 4 professional services firm, charting how ethnicity shapes career pathways and progression to partnership. This resulted in the firm’s altered approach to developing over 100 ethnic minority leaders, increasing engagement and retention. These research-informed inclusive practices are being promoted across the professional services sector, widening the impact.
Supporting research:
Decent pay is essential for well-being throughout the life course and particularly in old age, where the gender pensions gap is high across Europe. Informed by earlier work (Healy & Oikelome, 2011; Oikelome & Healy, 2007, 2013), Professor Healy was a co-recipient of an EU grant on Close the Deal, Fill the Gap: a three-country study (Italy, Poland and UK) which led to book (Gender Pay Gap and Social Partnership in Europe by Conley, Gottardi, Healy, Mikołajczyk, & Peruzzi, 2019) and practical guidelines ('Closing the GPG: Guidelines for the Social Partners'). The project website, https://www.fillthegap.eu/ , charts project activities including conferences and events. Key highlights were final conferences in Katowice, Rome and London. The European Commission acknowledged the success of the project with the following statement: ‘This is a good project with valuable results and a good dissemination strategy. The web site is very good, and all deliverables are well presented and downloadable in different languages.’
A case study in the EU project was the UK Financial Services, which has one of the largest UK pay gaps. Following the 2008 recession, financial services were told to tackle ‘their unsafe remuneration policies’ (Walker Review 2009) and a 2008 EHRC Inquiry exposed serious gender pay gapsUsing ONS data, Healy and Ahmed tracked changes on the pay gap before, during and after the recession (Healy & Ahamed, 2019b). Despite concerted pressure for change from Treasury committees, women’s groups and trade unions, they found only minor improvement alongside a resilient and high pay gap, later exposed by the new regulations on pay transparency. Their article attracted attention of the Financial Times and was included in a full page spread on the gender pay gap. We also produced a piece in The Conversation (Healy & Ahamed, 2019a). Their article 'Gender pay gap, voluntary interventions and recession - the case of the British financial services sector' (Healy & Ahamed, 2019b) is recognised as one of 15 nominees from over 2,500 articles world-wide for the 2020 Rosbeth Moss Kanter Award for Excellence in Work-Family Research. The same article was among Wiley’s top 10% downloaded in 2018-19.
Healy has presented her work on pay gaps to the EU, the Rome Parliament in various universities including Katowice, Verona, Venice, Lancaster Ghana, Sussex and London, at international conferences, to activist groups including Equality Trust and NHS Migrant doctors. Late 2019, QMUL CRED organised a public conference on ‘Equal Pay at 50’ with high profile speakers from media, unions, and voluntary organisations, including Carrie Gracie (BBC), Sandra Kerr (Business in the Community Anne Hurst (PwC), Dr Wanda Wyporska (Equality Trust), UnitetheUnion (Diana Holland), as well as academics - Professor Liz Schafer, Professor Jeff Frank, Dr Cecile Guillaume, Dr Emily Pfefer, and Professor Geraldine Healy. Healy’s recent work on pay gaps has turned to the academy, with a new paper drawing on HESA data on ‘The Gender Pay Gap in Academia – the case of UK business schools’ (Healy, Sevilla, & Pfefer, 2020) and linked is Emily Pfefer’s PhD on pay transparency (Pfefer, 2020).
Tessa’s 2016 book Gender and sexuality in male-dominated occupations: women workers in construction and transport, published by Palgrave Macmillan, highlighted the scarcity of research on the gendered experiences of transport workers, noting that studies of gender and transport primarily focus on women’s needs as transport users. As a result, Tessa has been commissioned to carry out work for the International Transport Workers Federation (ITF), the European Commission DG MOVE and United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP). In 2018 Tessa wrote a report for the ITF on The Impact of the Future of Work for Women in Public Transport, based on research carried out in Bangkok, Bogota, Cape Town, Mexico City and Nairobi. The results were presented to the ITF World Congress, Singapore in October 2018, and have fed into the work programmes of affiliate unions globally. She has acted as research consultant on a project commissioned by the European Commission DG MOVE to produce ‘Educational toolkits for fighting gender stereotypes, based on the example of the transport sector’, to be available to educators in 2021. She has also been commissioned to produce guidelines and training for staff in the Transport Division of UNESCAP on incorporating gender into transport project proposals. Together with Stephen Ison and Lucy Budd, she is editing a book on Gender, Work and Transport, to be published in Emerald’s Transport and Sustainability series in 2022.
Wright, T. (2016) Gender and sexuality in male-dominated occupations: women workers in construction and transport, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Wright, T. (2018) The Impact of the Future of Work for Women in Public Transport, London: International Transport Workers Federation, October 2018.
Wright, T. (2019) ‘The gendered impacts of technological change for public transport workers in the Global South’, Research in Transportation Business & Management. Published online 19 November 2019. DOI: 10.1016/j.rtbm.2019.100384
CRED is keen to welcome new PhD students to the Centre. If you are interested in doing a PhD in aspects of equality, inequalities, diversity and inclusion with us, are highly qualified and motivated, please get in touch by emailing the co-directors at cred@qmul.ac.uk
We can help match you with potential supervisors, but you can also contact CRED academics directly via email.
Some of the areas that CRED academics are keen to supervise PhDs are:
Scholarship opportunities
Both QMUL and SBM offer a number of scholarships to PhD researchers for suitably qualified candidates from the UK, EU and overseas for full-time study. To apply, you will normally have a first degree with first class honours (or equivalent) and a Master's degree at distinction level, in business/management or a related discipline. Applicants are required to have an IELTS overall score of 7 at the time of application.
These are competitive and you are encouraged to get in touch with a potential supervisor early in the academic year (September) to prepare a suitable proposal for submission in January. Please email us on cred@qmul.ac.uk or have a look here at the SBM PhD Pages for more detailed information.
Current PhD candidates
CRED’s blog series debates current equality and diversity issues, drawing on our extensive work as researchers with expertise in equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) at work and in organisations.
Originally created to examine the unequal effects of the coronavirus pandemic on workers and across organisations and society, the blog has been expanded to comment on important contemporary issues, including the flawed report from the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities, the implications of the Black Lives Matter movement for academia and revelations about racism in professional sport.
The blog aims to showcase the variety of research being undertaken by CRED academics and PhD students, as well as our Associates, and has featured the views of undergraduates and alumni. It brings our wide-ranging, international expertise to bear on contemporary EDI topics to further current debates and understanding.
Our full list of blog pieces appear here, and will be updated regularly with new articles:
Future-proofing flexible working: Learning lessons from lockdown to help working parents - Dr Maria Adamson, 27 March 2022
Class over race and gender: ‘Class ceiling’ and fickle nature of British political leadership - Dr Katarina Zajacova, 20 December 2022