Centre for Work + Life people
Staff at the centre have backgrounds in eleven different disciplinary areas (economics, gender studies, public health, psychology, politics, history, sociology, education, business, labour studies and international studies). They are a multi-disciplinary team, applying multiple research methods. They have also, between them, broad experience in a wide range of employment types and occupations.
Click on each person's name to see their contact details.
Prof
Barbara Pocock, Director
Barbara Pocock has been researching work, employment and industrial relations in Australia for over twenty years. Her research is supported by a Queen Elizabeth II Fellowship 2003–2007. Her first degree was in economics, her PhD was in gender studies, and both were undertaken at the University of Adelaide. She has worked in many jobs: in universities, advising politicians, on farms, in unions, for governments and as a mother. She is widely published. Her recent books include Kids count; The work–life collision; The labour market ate my babies and Living low paid (with Helen Masterman-Smith). She has a lifelong pre-occupation with work and inequality.
Catherine McMahon, Centre Manager
Catherine's background includes policy and management in state government agencies, refugee advocacy and program management in the university sector. She has an MBA and has worked in human services and economic development and is interested in the integration of social, economic and environmental concerns. Catherine has a long history of involvement with not-for-profit organisations concerning the status of women and human rights. She is an accredited mediator, an InterPlay facilitator and a Fellow of the Institute of Company Directors.
Dr
Pip Williams, Research Fellow
Pip has studied a range of social, psychological and health phenomena over the past sixteen years and is now working on a large multi-method study exploring how people fit work, home and community together in urban Australia. Her background is in psychology and public health. She recently completed her PhD in public health at the University of Adelaide, where she used grounded theory to explore the meaning of social support to new mothers and grandmothers. She also has a Masters in Public Health from the University of New South Wales. Pip has worked in many jobs: as an educator, massage therapist, market research interviewer, dental nurse, waitress, kitchen hand, accounts clerk, shop assistant, kiosk attendant, stable hand, door-to-door sales person and cleaner and – not least – as a mother.
Dr Natalie
Skinner, Research Fellow
Natalie's primary research interests are around health and well-being in the workplace. She has conducted research on a range of issues including stress and burnout, job satisfaction, work overload and more recently the interaction between work and life. Much of her research has focused on the health workforce. Her background is in psychology, public health and the alcohol and other drugs field. Natalie is the project manager for the Australian Work and Life Index (AWALI) and the Work, Life and Health Project. She also has an interest in strategies to bridge the gap between research and practice to support evidence-based policy making and organisational interventions. top^
Dr Jane Edwards, Researcher
Jane's academic background is in the sociology of health and illness and she has a PhD from the Department of Public Health, University of Adelaide. Her research has focused on mental health in rural settings, sexuality and its relationship to health and health service access; and service development and delivery in rural settings. More recently, Jane has focused on community-based research; the way people define community strength and its relationship to health, the impacts of water policy on communities and the development of tools to audit the capacity of communities to respond to opportunities or threats. She is currently engaged on a project examining the integration of work, home and community in urban settings. Jane's past employment has included nursing, cleaning and factory work.
Dr Reina Ichii, Researcher
Reina, who has recently joined the CWL team, has developed expertise in development economics and public finance management in her postgraduate studies and academic work experience. Reina received her Masters from Sophia University, Japan before being awarded her PhD by the University of South Australia in 2007. In the course of her doctoral studies, she developed new indicators to measure the budget performance of the Commonwealth government's childcare policies. After obtaining her PhD, she worked as a full-time lecturer at the Institute for Gender Studies in Ochanomizu University, Tokyo and in 2007 she advised the Gender Equality Bureau of the Japanese Government, travelling to New York as part of the Japanese delegation to the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women. Her current research interests include the gender impacts of fiscal policy and intra-household resource allocation, particularly time use analysis of domestic care activities.
Ken
Bridge, Adjunct Associate
Ken is an adjunct staff member at Adelaide University's Centre for Labour
Research with a long career in teacher education, community action and labour
studies. With postgraduate qualifications in sociology and occupational health
he has spent the last decade researching health and workplace issues, with a
focus on health professionals, workplace training and the impact of work on
family life. Since 2007 he has been assisting with the Work, Home and Community
Project at the Centre for Work + Life, conducting interviews and analysing the
material; his insights are enhanced by feedback from his extended family, which
includes eight children and nine grandchildren.
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Jen Manning, Administrator
Jen joined the Centre for Work + Life in March 2008, as administrator and
personal assistant to the Centre Director. She has had considerable and varied
experience in office management roles in the private sector particularly in the
medical area, and in government administration prior to working at the
university. She is the mother of two teenage children.
Suzanne Pritchard, Project Officer (Research)
Suzanne has a Bachelor of Arts (Asian Studies) degree and has worked in government and national agencies for many years in the education field, with a focus on targeted initiatives in the multicultural, language and literacy, ethnic community and 'students at risk' areas and on tertiary education policy. She has worked as executive officer to the board of the joint Commonwealth/state owned company education.au ltd and as project officer with the Federation of Ethnic Communities' Councils and the Australian Research Council, and has over six years' experience working in universities.
Dr
Jude
Elton, Researcher (until April 2009)
Jude Elton has engaged in research, policy development and advocacy on issues of importance to working people for thirty years. Her union, community sector and university employment has focused on industrial relations, equity and discrimination at work and in unions, education and training, labour market programs and occupational health and safety. In 2007 she researched the impact of WorkChoices on vulnerable workers and completed a PhD on factors affecting union relations with Aboriginal workers. She is now working on two studies: one on the participation of low-paid workers in VET and the other on the capacity of health sector employees to obtain a fit between work and other aspects of their lives. In her younger days Jude worked as a physiotherapy aide, waiter, packer and unpaid houseworker.
Joc Auer, Researcher
(until December 2008)
Jocelyn's research interests are work, life and ageing; and social policy. She has an Honours degree in social history from the University of Birmingham (UK) and over 25 years' experience in the health sector in management and governance roles and in program review and evaluation. Jocelyn is working on the Work, Life and Health study looking at the capacity of health sector professionals and other employees to obtain a better fit between work and other aspects of their lives.
PhD students
Catherine Earl, PhD Scholar
Catherine Earl's PhD research focuses on young workers in South Australia and the impact of the changing industrial relations climate on their engagement, experience and power in the workforce. Catherine has a Bachelor of Arts majoring in gender studies and anthropology and a Bachelor of Social Work (Honours). Catherine has held numerous casual, temporary and part-time positions in retail and administration. She has also worked in a pre-employment program for young people with multiple and severe barriers to employment.
Ali
Elder, PhD Scholar
Ali Elder commenced her PhD in April 2007 and is the recipient of the Andrew Knox Memorial Scholarship. Her research project is an investigation of the working lives of cleaners in the Australian commercial cleaning industry paying particular attention to dignity at work and the impact of cleaning work on the body. Ali has a Bachelor of Justice and Society majoring in philosophy and gender studies and a Bachelor of Arts (Honours). Ali previously worked for ten years in the film and television industry producing documentaries and training films.
Paul van Dijk, PhD Scholar
Paul van Dijk joined the CWL in 2008 as a PhD student in Social Policy. He has a Bachelor of Social Science majoring in Sociology and Political Science (with Honours in Sociology) from James Cook University, Cairns. Paul is working under an APAI scholarship as part of the Work–Life Balance, Well-Being and Health: Theory, Practice and Policy Project. His research at CWL is looking at how organisational justice affects work–life interactions. Areas of interest include quantitative and qualitative studies of employees' experiences with justice in the workplace that affects positive and negative spillover from work to personal life.
Sigrid Christiansen, PhD Scholar
(until end of March 2009)
Sigrid Christiansen's research interests are industrial relations, youth
studies, social policy and social sustainability. She has an Honours degree in
history from the University of Adelaide. Her undergraduate work focused on youth
at various moments in history, including working-class girls in
nineteenth-century South Australia and young resistance activists in Nazi
Germany. Her PhD thesis will analyse how changes to education, housing,
relationships and the workplace are influencing young adult lives in Adelaide.
This project forms part of the centre's 'Work, Housing, and Communities Study'.