IER News & blogs

On this International Women’s Day (IWD), we’re proud to highlight Katharina Sarter's work on socially responsible public procurement. Accounting for about one third of GDP, public procurement has increasingly become a lever for promoting equality. Katharina’s work has examined public policies and their implementation in different countries and sheds light on approaches, challenges and opportunities to lever public procurement to promote equality, fair working conditions, and more inclusive decision‑making.

The VET2050 project is launching a series of vision workshops bringing together practitioners, policymakers, employers, and learners to co-design what high quality vocational education and training could look like in England by 2050. These workshops explore long-term challenges and opportunities, from technological change to regional inequalities, and invite participants to imagine ambitious, evidence informed futures for the sector.

IER is delighted to celebrate the graduation of Dr Gianni Anelli-Lopez, who took part in the University of Warwick’s January 2026 commencement ceremony. Gianni completed his PhD under the supervision of Professor Terence Hogarth and Dr Jeisson Cardenas Rubio, with his dissertation titled “A multidimensional approach to measuring skill shortages: insights from the Chilean labour market.”

IER's Peter Dickinson joined meetings in the Horizon Bridges 5.0 project in Vienna.

He led one of the workshops as part of the foresight element of the project, discussing the policy implications across a range of potential scenarios that the transitions might bring.

At the end of January, Professor Peter Elias, CBE and Prof Chris Warhurst of IER attended the 3rd Global Labour Markets Conference (GLMC) in Riyadh. There were over 5000 delegates at the conference. Now an annual event, the GLMC is a bit like Davos for labour markets, attended by lots of government ministers, company CEOs and senior trade union officials.

Drawing on his recent experience of co-developing the UK Standard Skills Classification, Peter was asked to talk about how skills could be measured. Chris was asked to talk about policy development to help support the business case for good jobs.