Professor Peter Elias, CBE, of IER has been conferred as a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences. This Fellowship is a huge accolade. Fellows are drawn from academics, practitioners and policymakers, marking the impact of their work through the use of social science for public benefit.

Professor Chris Warhurst, Director of IER said:

‘It is another indication of the very high esteem with which Peter is held for his work on, amongst other things over the past thirty years, occupational classification schemes in the UK and internationally and, more recently, developing protocols for the use of Big data for the OECD countries.’

IER and FIER at the University of Jyväskylä have been working on a project commissioned by the EC DG EMPL researching lifelong guidance policy and practice in the EU. The team, led by Sally-Anne Barnes, organised a successful workshop in Brussels at the beginning of October to discuss the findings of the study. This event was attended by 32 experts in guidance and lifelong learning from across Europe.

Following this, the research findings were presented at the European Vocational Skills Week 2019 held in Helsinki. The interactive session on 'guidance for lifelong learning' was streamed live and debated what support was needed to promote lifelong guidance.

The research report is due to be published in 2020.

IER staff, led by Peter Elias, are currently engaged in a project funded by the Office for National Statistics, to add more detail into the next revision of the Standard Occupational Classification (SOC).

Having just completed work on the revision of SOC2010 to SOC2020, the new project will provide for a six-digit structure to the classification. The work involves a series of face-to-face meetings with interested parties, such as the NHS, Royal Society, Careers Wales, Skills Development Scotland and a wide range of government departments and agencies.

As part of this work, ONS and IER have teamed up to create an online survey available to anyone with an interest in this work. Details can be found here.

IER has been awarded two new ESRC-funded PhD studentships from the Midlands Graduate School Doctoral Training Partnership (DTP).

(1) The Collaborative Studentship with the Living Wage Foundation on ‘Understanding employer delivery of good work in the UK’ will be supervised by Professor Chris Warhurst and Sally Wright. For full details about the scholarship click here and for information on how to apply here. The application deadline is Monday, 11th March at 5pm.

(2) The Joint Studentship 'Social inequalities entering civvy street: researching the importance of class and gender in determining labour market outcomes of military veterans,' will be supervised by Professor Clare Lyonette (IER) and Professor Tracey Warren (University of Nottingham). Further details are available here. The application deadline is Friday, 15th March at 5pm.

Gail Irvine of the Carnegie UK Trust and Paul Novak of the TUC debate good jobs at the Warwick IER fringe event at the annual Conservative Party Conference in Birmingham.