The Centre for Comparative Labour Studies was established in 1993 to provide a focus for research on labour, work and employment within the Sociology Department and on a wider interdisciplinary basis.  Our interests embrace the themes of class relations, gender relations and ethnicity in work, employment and the labour market, and include the study of both organised and unorganised labour and both paid and unpaid work.  These themes are addressed across the past and the present and at a variety of scales, from the workplace and locality, to the occupation, sector or national economy, to wider regional and global processes.  Thus the Centre is committed to a wide variety of sorts of comparative research on work, employment and labour relations, utilising comparisons at a variety of scales appropriate to the analytical issues that are being addressed.

The Centre is organised on the basis of inter-disciplinary research and teaching, based in Sociology but also drawing on work in other departments and centres in the University. In order to meet these objectives, the Centre is organised on a federal basis with a Director, Secretary, and a Management Committee.