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International Women's Day 2008
Professor Barbara Pocock
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Barbara Pocock, inaugural Director of the Centre for Work + Life, has been researching work, employment and industrial relations for twenty-five years.
She has worked in many jobs – as a researcher and academic, advising politicians, on farms, in unions, for governments and as a mother. Her main areas of study have been work, employment relations, unions, inequality and vocational education. She was initially trained as an economist and has a Phd in gender studies.
She is actively engaged in public discussion about work issues and has extensive media
engagement. She has published many book chapters, reports and articles in academic journals, led the Australian Association of Industrial Relation Academics of Australia and New Zealand, is a board member of The Australia Institute and the South Australian Festival of Ideas, and gives around 40 invited public addresses a year in Australia and internationally (including in China, Canada, the US, and New Zealand in 2006-08).
Her books include
- Kids Count: Better early childhood education and care in Australia (2007, edited with Elizabeth Hill and Alison Elliot)
- The Labour Market Ate my Babies: Work, Children and a Sustainable Future. (2006)
- The Work/Life Collision (2003)
- Strife; Sex and Politics in Labour Unions (1997, edited)
- Demanding Skill: Women and Technical Education in Australia (1988).
In 2007, Barbara won the ‘society’ category of The Bulletin’s ‘Smart 100 Australians’. She has been a Dunstan Fellow (2006), a Queen Elizabeth II fellow (2003-2007), a Visiting Fellow at the International Institute for Labour Studies, International Labour Organisation, Geneva (May 2005) and a Visiting Fellow at Ruskin College, Oxford (May-June 2005).
Website: www.barbarapocock.com.au email: barbara.pocock@unisa.edu.au