Congratulations to Dr Di Zhang
Many congratulations to Di who has been awarded her PhD in Employment Research. Di's doctoral thesis was a comparative study focusing on graduates employed in a state-owned bank and a multi-national bank in Beijing. The study explored the utilisation and contribution of nationally and overseas educated employees in these organisations, in the context of Chinese labour market change.
Find out more about undertaking a PhD at IER here: http://www.warwick.ac.uk//ier/study
New research awards
ESRC award to develop and maintain data resources
Some more good news, the ESRC has made a large award to Professor Peter Elias and colleagues at Oxford, York and London to provide an advisory service that will assist the ESRC in developing and maintaining its growing portfolio of data resources. The award will run to December 2016.
Guest Professorship at Lund University
In November, Director of IER, Professor Chris Warhurst will take up a short residency at Lund University in Sweden. It is part of a Guest Professorship hosted by the Department of Sociology at Lund, funded by FÅS (the Swedish Council for Working Life and Social Research). Working with Dr Chris Mathieu of Lund, the purpose of the award is two-fold. First to help boost research capacity and interest in job quality in Sweden; second, to develop an international, comparative research project on job quality. If successful this project will be jointly led and managed by Lund and Warwick. The November visit is the first of three that will stretch into mid-2014.
IER researchers engage with the Monash-Warwick Alliance and secure CSIRO award
The Institute has been one of the first departments to engage with the Monash-Warwick Alliance (MWA) initiative. Professor Rob Wilson and Dr. Tony Meager (Monash) were supported by the Monash-Warwick Seed Fund to develop collaboration on economic and labour market modelling in the UK and Australia. Bernard Casey and Professor Noel Whiteside (Sociology) were funded to support their participation in the development of the Monash-led superannuation research bid to be submitted to CSIRO (the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation), the leading Australian government agency in the R&D field. Professor Robert Lindley and Professor Philip Taylor (Monash) collaborated on the labour market research elements of the same bid
The success of the CSIRO bid represents the first external joint research award received by the MWA. It is also the first ever award by CSIRO to social scientists – to date it has only supported major science and technology projects. The grant of AU$3 million grant is expected to be supplemented by a similar level of funding from the Australian financial services industry. The research will be carried out over the period 2013-2016 and involves leading researcher from Griffith University and The University of Western Australia, as well as Monash and Warwick. The overall cluster project leader is Professor Deborah Ralston (Monash Professor of Finance and Director of the Australian Centre for Financial Studies).
Recent events
Emeritus Professor Kate Purcell on an Australian study tour
Emeritus Professor Kate Purcell is currently on a study tour of Australia. She has given a range of presentations on her recent work on the graduate labour market in the UK, drawing particularly on her work with Professor Peter Elias on graduate labour market and occupational change over the last 20 years and the recently-completed Futuretrack survey. Throughout October, Kate has been presenting at Griffith University Institute for Higher Education in Brisbane, at the University of Sydney in conjunction with the National Association of Graduate Careers Advisory Services (AGCAS), at the Australian Workplace Research Centre and at the Centre for Studies in Higher Education (CSHE) at the University of Melbourne.
At Monash University, Kate has given several seminars and a public lecture, followed by an interdisciplinary research meeting with Monash University colleagues from a range of departments and colleagues from Graduate Careers Australia (the equivalent of HESA and HECSU combined. The objective of this workshop was to discuss possible future collaborative ventures between Monash and IER colleagues in the areas of graduate employment and labour market change.
For more information on Futuretrack see: http://go.warwick.ac.uk/futuretrack
Catch up with Professor Peter Elias
Professor Peter Elias has been very busy talking about his IER research and related interests all over the globe. Peter presented the OECD report 'New forms of data for research on the human condition' at the World Statistics Congress in Hong Kong. With Emeritus Professor Kate Purcell, he presented a paper 'The role of unwaged work in transitions from education to employment' at the 21st Annual Workshop of the European Research Network on Transitions in Youth, Berlin. On behalf of the Royal Society, Peter presented the report 'Science as an Open Enterprise' to the 4th Annual Portuguese/Brazilian conference on 'Open Access', University of Sao Paulo, Brazil. Peter also participated in the launch of the 'Trans-Atlantic Platform' in Montreal. The platform is an EU-funded framework for cooperation in the social sciences and humanities between the EU, Canada, the USA, Mexico and Brazil.
Cedefop seminar and workshop on Forecasting Skill Supply and Demand in Europe
Professor Rob Wilson and Dr Erez Yerushalmi attended and presented at this two day event which combined an expert seminar and validation workshop.The main objective of the seminar on Day 1 was to present and discuss with other experts from the field the methodology developed by IER and its partners (Cambridge Econometrics, Alphametrics, Economix, FGB, and others ) to anticipate changing skill demand and supply across Europe.
Cedefop organises regular technical workshops to discuss and validate the plausibility of the forecast results for individual countries and for Europe as a whole. In this, the first year of a new 4 year work programme, Cedefop has appointed a new group of individual country experts to provide country level feedback. This was the first meeting of the newly formed group of national experts with Cedefop representatives and the IER led research team. The workshop on Day 2 provided an opportunity to bring together the research team with the newly appointed national experts.
For further details of the event: see Day 1 and Day 2
Women in science workshop
Emeritus Professor Kate Purcell attended an ESF Exploratory Workshop in Rome on 'Women in Science: Perspectives in a Globalised Research System', where a group of senior researchers from throughout Europe were invited to give presentations on their work and the situations in their countries in relation to the issues under discussion and work together to define priorities for future research.
International careers benchmarking project stakeholder workshop
Professor Jenny Bimrose was invited to an event on 22nd October 2013 by Sir John Holman at Lord Sainsbury’s offices in Westminster. This workshop was billed as the pivotal event in the International Careers Benchmarking project that Sir John is carrying out for the Gatsby Foundation. Five countries (Netherlands, Germany, Hong Kong, Finland and Canada) have been visited to ask the question ‘What does good careers guidance in schools and colleges look like?’ These visits, together with visits to independent schools in England and a review of the literature on good practice in UK maintained schools, have provided the data to draw up a set of benchmarks for what “good” looks like. Karen Adriaanse, Ofsted’s National Lead for Careers Guidance, attended to provide a brief summary of Ofsted’s recent report on careers guidance. The purpose of the workshop was to test the draft benchmarks by submitting them to scrutiny by ‘20 hand-picked experts’.
Internet-enabled employment
Anne Green gave an invited presentation on 'Findings from the CROWDEMPLOY Project' at the 'Dynamics of Virtual Work' meeting in Athens, 7-9 October. 'Dynamics of Virtual Work' is an international interdisciplinary network, funded by COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology) examining the transformation of work in the Internet Age (see http://www.cost.eu/domains_actions/isch/Actions/IS1202). The presentation was on behalf of the CROWDEMPLOY project team at IER, comprising Anne Green, Maria de Hoyos, Sally-Anne Barnes, Beate Baldauf and Heike Behle. The CROWDEMPLOY project, funded by the European Commission, is exploring internet-enabled exchanges with potential to impact on employment and the employability of individuals. It follows an earlier project, ICT4EMPL, and associated reports, on Employability, Inclusion and ICT, undertaken by the same team with David Owen. For further details of the ICT4EMPL project see http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/ier/research/ict4empl/
Immigrant workers and workforce development
In December 2012 the Transatlantic Council, an initiative of the Migration Policy Institute based in Washington DC, held a meeting on 'Immigration and Skills: Maximising Human Capital in a Changing Economic Landscape'. Anne Green was commissioned to write a report on workforce development in the UK to inform discussions at that meeting. Anne's report, entitled 'Immigrant Workers and the Workforce Development System in the United Kingdom', has been published by the Migration Policy Institute and is available at: http://www.migrationpolicy.org/pubs/TCM-Skills-UnitedKingdom.pdf
IER presentations at WES 2013
Many IER staff and several of its current and former PhD students have presented at the Work, Employment and Society conference held at the University of Warwick on the 3rd to the 5th of September. This included sessions on the graduate labour market (Professors Kate Purcell and Peter Elias, Dr Heike Behle, Dr Charikleia Tzanakou and Daria Luchinskaya), crowd sourced work and crowd funding (Dr Sally-Anne Barnes and Dr Maria de Hoyos), the concept of employability (Professor Anne Green), work-life balance (Dr Clare Lyonette, Miram Gbajumo-Sheriff), older workers (Beate Baldauf and Professor Robert Lindley) and a special session on the work of Rosemary Crompton chaired by Professor Kate Purcell.
Internal IER Workshop on the transferability of (under-)graduate knowledge gained in UK HEIs within the European Higher Education Area
In a recent internal workshop, Dr Heike Behle presented findings on European Mobile Graduates with regards to their social composition, the benefits they gained from their mobility experience, and differences in their early career paths. For more on Heike's work on this topic see: http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/ier/research/transferability
Latest IER publications
IER report on secondary analysis of employer surveys published by UKCES
This report published by UKCES looks in detail at data from two complementary employer surveys, the UK Commission’s Employer Skills Survey 2011 and the UK Commission’s Employer Perspectives Survey 2010. The report was written by Dr David Owen, Dr Yuxin Li and Professor Anne Green. The data is analysed to examine skills gaps, training behaviour, and skills shortages in urban and rural areas across the UK. Detailed geographical data are available.
Find out more here: http://www.ukces.org.uk/publications/er75-urban-rural-skills
Cambridge Econometrics and IER report on measuring additionality in Apprenticeships
A new report by Cambridge Econometrics and Terence Hogarth and Lynn Gambin at the Warwick Institute for Employment Research was published on 17th October. The report, commissioned and published by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) considers how the value added by government investment in Apprenticeships should be measured. The report explores how existing datasets can be used to improve understanding of additionality in apprenticeships and especially considers surveys which have become available since earlier research on this issue. Recommendations about further (cost-effective) data collection and analysis are also set out.
Download the full report
Future of Manufacturing
The Project Report and Summary Report from the Foresight Future of Manufacturing project were published on 30th October and launched at events in London. Anne Green, who was appointed by the Government Chief Scientific Adviser as a member of the project's Lead Expert Group (overseeing technical aspects of the project and involved in writing the report), attended the events.
The Future of Manufacturing Project looks at opportunities and challenges facing manufacturing to 2050.
- Project Report
- Summary Report
- Full evidence base for the project available to download at the Foresight website. This includes an Evidence Paper co-authored by Terence Hogarth and Rob Wilson entitled "What type of future manufacturing workforce will the UK need?"
Review of Apprenticeship Research final report
The final report for the Review of Apprenticeship Research carried out by IER for the National Apprenticeship Service has now been published. This review, led by Lynn Gambin, considered publications concerned with apprenticeships and aimed at developing an ongoing and periodic review of such outputs. The review covered materials published from January 2010. The final report updates the project’s initial overall literature review, drawing on material published and summarised in monthly updates produced over the course of the review. The report provides discussion aligned with key themes which have emerged in the research and other publications over the course of the project. This organisation of the review is meant to highlight the policy-relevance of various outputs.
For more information on the review and links to the initial literature review and monthly updates see: http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/ier/research/reviewapprenticeship/
Upcoming events
IER research on Apprenticeships to be presented in Canada
On 15th November, Lynn Gambin will be presenting research on apprenticeships and work-based learning at Memorial University of Newfoundland (Canada). The 'Synergy Session' is being hosted by Memorial University's Department of Economics and the Leslie Harris Centre of Regional Policy and Development. The presentation will draw on the programme of research Lynn and Terence Hogarth have been developing over the past few years within IER.
Registration for the event is free and individuals unable to attend in person are welcome to attend via webinar. For further details of the event see: http://tinyurl.com/naq24s7 |
