Research
For further information please refer to the profile at my current institution
Completed PhD at Warwick Business School in the group Organisational Behaviour and Human Resource Management (OHRM), holding a full scholarship from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC).
Joined the Institute for Advanced Studies (IAS) at the University of Warwick as an Early Career Fellow from April 2016 and made an Associate Fellow of the IAS in June 2016.
Deborah is now a Lecturer in Organisational Behaviour at Kingston University London.
Current research
Deborah is now working on projects that concern digital media, new media work, and social media. Specifically, she is looking at issues of work-life, authenticity, meaning, and digital being in relation to the work of digital social influencers. She is also interested in contemporary feminism, cultures of confidence/anxiety; issues of inequality of representation and access to new media work; and affective work. This is being funded by Kingston University's competitive First Grant Scheme.
Doctoral research
‘Subjects of Diversity:Relations of power/knowledge in the constructions of diversity practitioners’
The concept of ‘diversity’ has become a common feature in UK organisations over the last twenty or so years. It offers a set of arguments about what the world is like, who people are, how they relate to one another, and how the world should be. It has been used to bring about a host of different actors, objects and practices. And yet, we know little about one of the central elements of this field of diversity – diversity practitioners. They play an important role in defining what diversity comes to mean in local contexts, they are the experts of the field.
Drawing on Foucault’s theories of power/knowledge and the ‘subject’, along with the notion of bricolage, the research examines the different forms of knowledge that diversity practitioners use to construct themselves as expert subjects, and in turn how they seek to construct a particular subject of others, the ‘diversity trainee’, as the outcome of diversity training. The findings show how the subjects of the diversity practitioner and the ‘diversity trainee’ are shaped by dominant societal discourses of the expert and the neoliberal subject, as well as by the history of equality work and the organisational challenges that diversity practitioners face. But they also show that diversity practitioners are actively involved in forming themselves as subjects by producing counter-discourses, which construct skills, values, and knowledge. Diversity training is shown to mobilise a form of power known as ‘modern government’ in seeking to constitute the diversity trainee as a self-regulating subject, which adds complexity to previous discussions of the ethics of this form of power.
Diversity practitioners are central elements of their field, so recognising the relations of power/knowledge in their practices is fundamental to considering any future development of their practices, as well as better understanding the concept of diversity itself.
Keywords: diversity, experts, training, Foucault, government
Previous research
Previously, Deborah studied at University of Birmingham where I completed an MPhil in Gender Studies. My thesis was a small-scale exploration of undergraduate perceptions of how gender inequality might have an impact on their future careers, examined in the context of university and governmental policies on equality and diversity. You can find this thesis here: http://etheses.bham.ac.uk/3044/ For further information about this work, please email Deborah.
Click Deborah's name tab/homepage on the bar above to find out more about my wider research interests, future research plans, and academic experience to date.
Contact me:
Deborah Brewis
deborah.brewis.11 (at) mail.wbs.ac.uk
D.Brewis (at) Kingston.ac.uk
Ph.D. Supervisors:
Dr Deborah Dean
http://www.wbs.ac.uk/faculty/members/deborah/dean
Professor Kim Hoque
http://www.wbs.ac.uk/about/person/kim-hoque/
External advisor:
Professor Martin Parker