Graham Attwell

Graham Attwell is a specialist in Technology-enhanced teaching and learning and web-based learning environment development. He is involved in research and development into pedagogies for Technology Enhanced Learning, recognition of informal learning, training of teachers and trainers and development of open source software for education and Open Educational Resources. His recent work has focused on research and development of new applications and approaches to e-Portfolios and Personal Learning Environments and use of social software for learning and knowledge development. He is experienced in the use of ICT for e-Learning and in  developing, delivering and moderating e-learning programmes for teachers and trainers in initial training and for professional development. His company, Pontydysgu, has organised a series of face-to-face and on-line workshops for teachers in producing Open Education resources. He is a consultant to OECD and UNESCO on open content development and and has acted as a consultant to the European Centre for Vocational Education and Training (CEDEFOP) on virtual communities and knowledge harvesting. He has extensive experience of national project evaluation and national and international programme evaluation in relation to innovations in learning, including use of ICT to support learning. He is currently working with the support team for the JISC Emerge and CREATE programmes. His popular edublog - the Wales Wide Web can be found at http://www.pontydysgu.org/blogs/waleswideweb/

Stephen Billett

Professor Stephen Billett has worked as a vocational educator, educational administrator, teacher educator, professional development practitioner and policy developer within the Australian vocational education system and more recently as a teacher and researcher at Griffith University. Since 1992, he has researched learning through and for work, and has published widely in the fields of vocational learning, workplace learning and conceptual accounts of learning. These include publications in Culture and Psychology, Learning and Instruction and Mind, Culture and Activity, Studies in Continuing Education and as well as sole authored books (Learning through work: Strategies for effective practice (Allen and Unwin 2001); Work, change and workers (Springer 2006)and edited books (Work, Subjectivity and Learning, Emerging Perspectives of Work and Learning), secured over $1.5 million in competitively funded grants from Australian Research Council, National Vocational Educational and Training Research funds, Fulbright Foundation, state and private sector. Professor Billett is currently on the editorial boards of 8 refereed journals, including the American Education Research Journal, the second most cited journal in the field, and he reviews articles for many other journals. He is also the Founding and Editor in Chief of Vocations and Learning: Studies in professional and vocational education (Springer). He has been a Fulbright Scholar and a Fellow of the Australian Learning and Teaching Council. His intersections with the work of the Institute of Employment Research are those concerned with work and learning through and for work. The engagements have extended to contributing to work published with colleagues from the Institute and to grant submissions. 

Derek Bosworth

Derek Bosworth is also an Emeritus Professor at the University of Manchester, Senior Research Associate at St. Peter’s College, Oxford and Research Fellow at the UK Commission for Employment and Skills.  Until recently, he was also an Honorary Professor at Wuhan University of Technology.  He has worked with IER and its predecessors for over thirty years. He started work as a researcher at The University of Warwick, undertaking workforce projections for the then Engineering Industry Training Board, and has continued to take an interest in issues relating to skills and employment throughout his career. He has worked extensively on both theoretical and empirical labour supply and demand models, as well as analysing their implications for skill shortages, education and training.

Geoff Briscoe

Geoff Briscoe is a Senior Lecturer in the Built Environment Department at Coventry University. He teaches modules in construction economics, communications, construction management and construction finance. He has authored numerous academic papers and research monographs, mainly in the fields of construction labour markets and supply chain management. Recently published papers have appeared in Construction Management and Economics (2005), Building Research and Information (2006) and Construction Information Quarterly (2006). He has received funding from the European Social Fund to undertake a skills analysis linked to construction industry supply chains and has carried out other research for CITB-Construction Skills, ICE and CIRIA. Geoff has been an Associate Research Fellow at the Institute for Employment Research since 1985. He has worked with the Institute for Employment Research on numerous projects concerned with labour skills, apprenticeships, training and occupational employment, especially in the construction sector.

Bill Daniel

W.W. Daniel, CBE, is an Associate Fellow of IER, and former Director of Policy Studies Institute. His research, starting with his pioneering study of racial disadvantage during the 1960s (Racial Disadvantage in England, 1968) and including one of the first longitudinal studies of unemployed people carried out during the late 1970s and early 1980s (The Unemployed Flow, 1991), has had a major influence on equality and employment policy in the UK. He was also responsible for establishing the Workplace Industrial / Employment Relations Survey, one of the most widely cited and analysed surveys in the world. He has had a long standing relationship with IER and, since his retirement from PSI, has worked on a number of labour market studies at the Institute.

Chris Hasluck

Chris Hasluck is a labour economist and social policy researcher. He is currently an Associate Director at SQW Consulting, one of the UK’s top economic consultancies. Prior to joining SQW in 2009, Chris was Principal Research Fellow at the Institute for Employment Research, University of Warwick. Chris has a broad range of experience, having worked variously in industry, as a lecturer in higher education and as manager of a large academic department (he was Deputy Head of School of Economics and Accounting at Leicester Polytechnic). He has undertaken a wide range of research in the field of labour market analysis and policy evaluation with particular expertise in the analysis of local labour markets, unemployment and worklessness, employment services (public and private), employers’ recruitment practices and employment programmes. He has contributed evaluations as varied as New Deal, Employment Zones, Earnings Top-up, Skills Coaching, Apprenticeships, Parenting Early Intervention Pilots, City Strategies and the Employment Advisers pilots delivered as part of the Improving Access to Psychological Therapies programme. Chris has conducted a number of systematic evidence reviews covering topics such as workless households, social exclusion amongst working age adults, international evidence relating to profiling unemployed people and the costs to employers of recruiting and retaining people with disabilities and long-term health issues. His publications include Urban Unemployment: Local Labour Markets and Employment Initiatives (Longman), Local Labour Markets: Problems and Policies (Longman) and Unemployment and Public Policy in a Changing Labour Market (Policy Studies Institute) as well as numerous journal articles and project reports. Chris is a long-serving member of the Board of Governors of the Bupa Foundation, the medical charity.

Deirdre Hughes

Deirdre Hughes is a University Reader in Guidance Studies and a freelance writer/researcher. She has a particular interest and expertise in building the evidence-base for careers work at a regional, national and international level. She writes and researches in the field career development, the impact of careers and guidance related interventions, youth policy, adult guidance, and workforce development issues. She has worked closely with Professor Jenny Bimrose and Dr Sally-Anne Barnes at the Institute for Employment Research (IER) on a five-year longitudinal study examining what constitutes effective guidance practice.

In 2008, she was invited to submit written evidence to the National Skills Forum IAG Inquiry (2008) and, in early 2004, she presented written and oral evidence to the House of Commons Education and Select Committee advising on matters related to the National Skills Strategy: 14-19 Education. She is currently an external evaluator at Reading University’s ‘Centre for Excellence in Career Management Skills’ (CCMS) and external examiner at Limerick University, University of Ulster and the West of Scotland University. She is also Founding Director of the International Centre for Guidance Studies (1998-2008), Director of DMH Associates (2008 – present) and Vice-President of the Institute of Career Guidance (ICG).

Mary McMahon

Dr Mary McMahon is a senior lecturer in the School of Education at The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia where she teaches in the guidance and counselling specialisation of the Master of Educational Studies. She writes and researches in the field of career development and is particularly interested in the career development of children and adolescents, narrative and storied approaches to career counselling and qualitative approaches to career assessment. A more recent interest in adult career transition has resulted in a research collaboration with Professor Jenny Bimrose from the Institute for Employment Research. 

Imanol Nuñez

Dr Imanol Nuñez is a lecturer at the Universidad Publica de Navarra in Pamplona (Spain). He has also worked as visiting research fellow at the Universidad Autonoma de Barcelona and Warwick IER, and collaborates with the Spanish Institute of Health and Safety. As a Labour economist, his research is focused on the empirical analysis of the impact of issues such as health, ageing and education on employment outcomes. His work at the IER has been mainly focused on the use of advanced econometrics in large databases such as the European Labour Force Survey (ELFS), particularly, to analyse the transition to the labour market of European graduates. His research has been published in journals including; Human Resource Management, Social Science and Medicine, Higher Education, Ageing and Society or International Journal of Manpower.

Professor Mark Watson

Mark is a professor in the Psychology Department of the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University in South Africa. He specialises in career, school and adolescent psychology and his research focuses on the career development and career assessment of primary, secondary and tertiary students from all South African population groups. Mark has published extensively in international journals, is the co-editor of a career book, has contributed book chapters to several international career texts, and is a co-developer of an international qualitative career assessment tool. He is presently on the editorial advisory board of a number of national and international career journals.