Professor Joanne Duberley MICPD, FRSA, FAcSS

Social Sciences
Interim Pro-Vice-Chancellor and Head of the College of Social Sciences

Contact details

Telephone: +44 (0) 121 414 6387
Fax: +44 (0) 121 414 2982
Email: j.p.duberley@bham.ac.uk
Nora Olah, Interim EA to Head of College: n.olah@bham.ac.uk

Address: College of Social Sciences
Muirhead Tower
Birmingham
B15 2TT

Professor Jo Duberley is interim Pro-Vice-Chancellor and Head of the College of Social Sciences. Jo is also Co-Director of the Work Inclusivity Research Centre (WIRC). She is an elected Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences and the Royal Association of Arts and Manufacturing and a Member of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development.

Jo joined the University of Birmingham in 2002 as a lecturer in Birmingham Business School, having previously worked at Heriot Watt University, Sheffield University, Leeds University and Sheffield Hallam University. She has an extensive record of research funding from ESRC, EPSRC and the British Academy amongst others. Central to her research is an interest in the concept of career. In recent years, she has focussed on the impact of gender, ethnicity, social class and age on careers in a variety of contexts, including academia, defence and professional service organisations. Current research projects focus on women’s experiences of ageing at work and retirement and the career transitions of ethnic minority doctors.

Qualifications

PhD Organisation Studies, Loughborough University, 1994

BA (Hons) Organisation Studies with Industrial Relations Lancaster University, 1989

MCIPD

Biography

Jo joined the University of Birmingham in 2002. Prior to this she had held posts at Heriot Watt, Sheffield, Leeds and Sheffield Hallam Universities. She has held a wide variety of leadership posts whilst at Birmingham including, Director of undergraduate programme in Business and Management, Director of Postgraduate Research for College of Social Sciences, Director of Research for Birmingham Business School and Director of Research for the College of Social Sciences.

Central to her research is an interest in the concept of career. Her main contribution in this area has been to develop a more theoretically informed and contextually embedded understanding of career. In the last ten years she has developed research examining the impact of gender, ethnicity, social class and age on careers in a variety of contexts including defence, professional service organisations and the police in the UK. She co-directs the Work Inclusivity Research Centre with Dr Holly Birkett and has successfully won over £2 million of research funding to support her research. She publishes her work in journals such as Journal of Vocational Behaviour, Human Relations, Work Employment and Society and Gender Work and Organisation.

Teaching

BSc Business and Management final year elective in Change Management

Postgraduate supervision

Jo would be interested in supervising students in the following areas:

Social mobility and access to the elite professions
Extended working lives and older women’s experiences of work
Career transitions and downshifting

Research

Jo’s research is focussed on the concept of career. She has lead a number of projects exploring careers in a variety of contexts, including academic scientists, women entrepreneurs, NHS managers and women approaching retirement. She has received funding for this from ESRC, the EPSRC, British Academy and NHS SDO.

Current interests

Older women’s experience of working
Women in engineering
Social class in organisations
Workplace inclusion and the lived experience of diversity

Other activities

Fellow of Royal Society of Arts
MCIPD
Fellow of Academy of Social Sciences

Publications

Carmichael, F, Darko, C, Ercolani, M, Daley, P, Duberley, J, Schwanen, T & Wheatley, D (2024) 'Long hours of work and long commutes in the Greater Accra region of Ghana: Time Poverty and Gender', Feminist Economics.

Carmichael, F., Darko, C., Daley, P., Duberley, J., Ercolani, M., Schwanen, T., & Wheatley, D. (2023) Time poverty and gender in urban sub-Saharan Africa: Long working days and long commutes in Ghana’s Greater Accra Metropolitan Area. Journal of International Development. Advance online publication.

Giunti, G and Duberley, J (2023) Academic Entrepreneurship: Work Identity in Contexts, Entrepreneurship & Regional Development, 35(5/6), 532-552

Cohen, L. Duberley J., and Torres, B (2023) Experiencing gender regimes: Accounts of women professors in Mexico, the UK and Sweden, Work Employment and Society, 37(2) 525-544

Cohen, L and Duberley, J (2021) Making Sense of Our Working Lives: The concept of the career imagination, Organization Theory, vol 2, pp1-15

Atkinson, C., Beck, V., Brewis, J., Davies, A., & Duberley, J. (2021). Menopause and the workplace: new directions in HRM research and HR practice. Human Resource Management Journal. 31(1) 49-64

Atkinson, C., Carmichael, F., & Duberley, J. (2021). The menopause taboo at work: Examining women’s embodied experiences of menopause in the UK police service. Work, Employment and Society, 35(4), 657-676.

Cohen, L and Duberley J (2020) Women in extraordinary times: The impact of external jolts on professional women’s careers, Journal of Professions and Organisations, 7 (3), 247-264

Gribling, M., & Duberley, J. (2020). Global competitive pressures and career ecosystems: contrasting the performance management systems in UK and French business schools. Personnel Review. (forthcoming) published online September 2020

Fernando, D, Cohen, L & Duberley, J (2019), Navigating sexualised visibility: A study of British women engineers, Journal of Vocational Behavior. 113, pp6-19 DOI: 10.1016/j.jvb.2018.06.001, pp 1-14.

Garbe, E and Duberley, J (2019) Career Change: Examining structure and agency in changing humanitarian careers, International Journal of Human Resource Management

Cohen, L., Duberley, J., McGavin, P (2019) Losing the faith: Public sector work and the erosion of career calling, Work, Employment and Society, 33, 2, pp326-335

Al- Ismail, S., Carmichael, F and Duberley, J (2019) Female employment in hotels in Saudi Arabia and UAE, Gender in Management, 34 7, pp. 554-576

Fernando, D., Cohen, L. and Duberley, J. (2018) What helps? Women engineers’ accounts of staying on, Human Resource Management Journal. 28, pp. 479-495[1]

Birkett, H., Carmichael, F and Duberley, J (2017) Activity in the third age: Examining the relationship between careers and retirement experiences, Journal of Vocational Behavior, 103 pp52-65

Duberley, J., Carrigan, M., Bosangit, C and Ferreira, J (2017) Diamonds are a girl’s best friend?... Examining Gender and Careers in the Jewellery Industry, Organization, vol 24(3) pp355-376

Duberley, J and Carmichael, F (2016) Career pathways into retirement in the UK: linking older women’s pasts to the present, Gender Work and Organization, vol 23 (6) pp582-599

View all publications in research portal