Holly Smith

Research Associate

Holly Smith joined the Work and Equalities Institute (WEI) in October 2021 as a Research Associate on a major ESRC-funded project looking at how equality policies and regulation at work have developed across four different European countries.

The three-year £566,000 project, entitled ‘The Politics of Equality: The Evolving Nature of Equality Agendas at Work in the UK and Europe in a Context of Political Uncertainty' also involves partners at the Grenoble Ecole de Management.

In particular the project is looking at the UK in comparison with France, the Netherlands and Spain, countries that are seen as having engaged - albeit in different ways - with expanding equality at work for a diverse range of workers across different dimensions.

Comparative research

The research builds further on the tradition of comparative international research developed within WEI as an approach to better understand social phenomena and build informed policy advice.

As Holly says: "The project is relevant not only for the specific issues it will consider in terms of equality, but also because it provides an opportunity to explore how national contexts measure against, reflect on, learn from, and share with other national contexts experiences and policies in relation to such employment issues."

Holly is heading up the UK analysis as part of the project, and will be specifically working with Miguel Martinez Lucio, Professor of International HRM and Comparative Industrial Relations, who was her supervisor during her PhD at Alliance Manchester Business School (AMBS).

Timely

She said the study was particularly timely given the heightened awareness of gender and race issues in both the workplace and wider society. "In recent years we have seen increased debate around the language and politics of equality, and in some contexts the enforcement of equality legislation is proving to be challenging."

"One of the key aims of this project will be to outline the main challenges that have arisen due to a range of political, economic, and social factors, and to identify how these are influencing the nature of equality strategies within the context of the workplace."

"This is an absolutely fascinating project to be involved with and I'm really looking forward to immersing myself in the subject and reading a whole new body of literature."

Real-world research

Holly says she has a great passion for real-world research into workplace inequalities which stems from her own personal journey. After leaving school at 16 she worked in a succession of lowly paid jobs, eventually working at a local authority refuse collection depot.

The depot was strongly unionised, and Holly became a trade union shop steward and her branch equalities rep, taking on casework, representation, negotiating, organising, and volunteering at the union's learning centre.

At the same time, she was keen to advance her own learning, and after completing a TUC diploma in employment law she was encouraged by her tutor to pursue a Masters in International Labour Studies at Ruskin College, an independent college specifically established to provide educational opportunities for working class people, with strong historical links to the labour movement.

The college had close links with the Critical Labour Studies group, a network of researchers and trade unionists, and it was through this link that she became aware of the work of academics at WEI.

PhD scholarship

Having completed her masters Holly was keen to pursue her research interests further, and in 2014 successfully gained a PhD scholarship at AMBS aligned to the ongoing Just Work research project.

Her PhD specifically looked at the emergence of new forms of trade unionism within precarious work. "At that time we were seeing the emergence of new organisations that were supporting worker rights, yet there was little academic literature about these groups and their organisational qualities and how they related to the existing movement. However, this is a very fast-changing landscape and will continue to be a very active field of academic research."

Holly's first solo authored article on the UK labour movement was recently published in Economic and Industrial Democracy, while she has also published with other WEI colleagues on new technology and trade unions.