Organisers and Keynote Speakers

Organisers

Keynote Speakers

Professor Valeria Pulignano (KU Leuven, Belgium)

Valeria Pulignano is Professor in Sociology at the Centre for Sociological Research (CESO) - KU Leuven. She has published extensively on topics related to the sociology of work, comparative European industrial (employment) relations, labour markets and inequality, working conditions, job quality and workers’ voice. She serves as Principal Coordinator of the research network on Work, Employment and Industrial Relations within the European Sociological Association and she is Co-Researcher at CRIMT (Centre for Globalisation and Work) at the University of Montreal and Laval in Canada. She is PI of a ERC Advanced Grant ResPecTMe https://soc.kuleuven.be/ceso/wo/erlm/respectmeon where she studies unpaid labour in the platform economy, creative industries and care, and explore how it accounts for– and develop a measurement of - precarious work. She is author of several books among which (2020) Shifting Solidarity (with Van Hoyweghen I. and G. Meyers) Palgrave; (2018) Reconstructing Solidarity: Labour unions, precarious work, and the politics of institutional change in Europe (with Doellgast V. and Lillie N.) OUP; (2016) Employment Relations in an Era of Change (with  H.D. Köhler and P. Stewart), ETUI; (2013) The Transformation of Employment Relations (with J. Arrowsmith), Routledge; (2008) Flexibility at work: critical developments in the international automobile industry (with Stewart, P., Danford, A. and Richardson, M.), Palgrave. She serves as Associate Editor of Work, Employment and Society (British Sociological Association)       

Professor Richard Hyman (London School of Economics and Political Science, UK)

Richard Hyman is Emeritus Professor of Industrial Relations at the London School of Economics and Founding Editor of the European Journal of Industrial Relations. He also founded and coordinates the annual Industrial Relations in Europe Conference (IREC). He has written extensively on the themes of industrial relations, trade unionism, industrial conflict and labour market policy, and is author of a dozen books as well as some two hundred journal articles and book chapters. His comparative study Understanding European Trade Unionism: Between Market, Class and Society (Sage, 2001) is widely cited by scholars working in this field. His book Trade Unions in Western Europe: Hard Times, Hard Choices (with Rebecca Gumbrell-McCormick), was published by Oxford University Press in October 2013 with a second edition in June 2018. Their joint study Towards a European System of Industrial Relations? The ETUC in the 21st Century will be published in 2023.

Professor Jane Parker (ETUI, Brussels, and Massey Business School, New Zealand)

Jane Parker was full professor and is now adjunct professor (Employment Relations and HRM) at the School of Management, Massey University in New Zealand, and is a senior researcher at the European Trade Union Institute (ETUI) in Brussels. Sheis co-editor in chief for Labour and Industry: A journal of the social and economic relations of work, an associate fellow of the Industrial Relations Research Unit (IRRU) at the University of Warwick, and a member of the International Labour and Employment Relations Association (ILERA). Jane has led an array of projects on employment, regulation and equity for the ILO and other agencies. Her research focuses on comparative industrial relations, social movement unionism, workplace equity and democracy, and strategic human resource management. Recently, she was the lead editor of and contributor to a new cross-national book, Working women in Asia and the Pacific: Experiences, Challenges and Ways Forward (2023); co-authored an article on worker freedom and social movement unionism for International Labour Review; and wrote a chapter on Europe in transition and workplace democracy in the ETUI's Benchmarking in Europe 2023 publication.

Professor Chris Forde (University of Leeds, UK)

Chris Forde is Professor of Employment Studies in the Work and Employment Relations Department, and Co-Director of the Centre for Employment Relations Innovation and Change at the University of Leeds. He is also Deputy Director of the ESRC Digital Futures at Work Research Centre, where he co-leads the Digit Data Observatory. Chris’s research interests focus on migration (the regulation of migration, employer labour strategies, the experiences of migrants and worker collectivities and migration); the impact of the future of work; temporary work; gig and platform work; job quality; restructuring; labour market regulation; job quality; well-being; and business lobbying. He is currently co-investigator on a 3 year ESRC project looking at Labour Mobility in Transition: a multi-actor study of the re-regulation of migrant work in 4 sectors. 

Dr. Christine Aumayr-Pintar (Eurofound, Dublin) 

Christine Aumayr-Pintar is a senior research manager in the Working Life unit at Eurofound. Her current research topics include minimum wages, collectively agreed wages and gender pay transparency. She also manages the EU PolicyWatch database. From the end of 2022, she will take up the coordination of Eurofound’s research on industrial relations and social dialogue, while also managing the Network of Eurofound Correspondents (NEC). Before joining Eurofound in 2009, she worked as a researcher in labour markets and regional economics at Joanneum Research, Austria. She studied economics in Graz, Vienna and Jönköping and holds a Master’s degree and a PhD in Economics.

To secure your spot at IREC 2023, please visit our booking page here. If you have any technical or other issues in registering and paying for IREC 2023, please contact the Conference Administrator Rosalind Porter at IREC2023@durham.ac.uk.