Staff Profile

Ana Lopes is a senior lecturer in Work and Employment and a Researcher Education and Development Fellow with the RED team in School X, contributing to postgraduate training for students across the HaSS Faculty. 

Her main research interests are:

• Gender, work and employment relations
• Gender, careers and the workplace
• Equality and diversity, equal opportunities, diversity management
• Living wage campaigns and community organising

Ana is an Associate Editor for the journal Work, Employment and Society and a book review editor of the journal Gender, Work and Organization.

She is a board member of the Gender Relations in the Labour Market and the Welfare State (RN14) research network of the European Sociological Association and a founding member of GIBS - Gender issues in Business Schools, a network for PhD students and Early Career researchers. She is an Associate Academic Fellow of the CIPD and a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

Ana Lopes is passionate about equality and diversity. Her research focuses mostly on the areas of gender, work and employment relations. Recently she has been particularly interested in the experiences and careers of women who work in non-traditional roles or in male dominated industries. She has been working on a project that has culminated in the development of a mentoring scheme for women (and by women) in aviation and aerospace, based on a knowledge exchange partnership between an academic team and the Royal Aeronautical Society, Airbus and the Royal Air Force and co-funded by the Economic and Social Research Council. This unique mentoring scheme, called alta, has been launched in 2015. The academic team continues to be involved to measure and monitor research impact.

She is also working with one of the UK’s largest unions on a project commissioned by their Women’s Committee. The study aims to better understand women’s experiences at work, career progression and development needs, as well as women’s representation and participation in trade union activism.

Ana originally studied Social Anthropology and gained her PhD in Sociology with the thesis ‘Organising in the sex industry: an action research investigation’. She has also written and published work on the casualisation of academic work, living wage campaigns and community organising.

PhD Supervision:

Ana is interested in supervising doctoral research in the following areas:

• Gender, work and employment relations
• Gender, careers and the workplace
• Equality and diversity, equal opportunities, diversity management
• Living wage campaigns and community organising

Ana leads the following modules:

• NBS8383 Diversity in a Global Context(PG)
• BUS3006 Managing Diversity (UG)
• HSS8001 Thinking About Research

• Articles

  • Durbin S, Lopes A, Warren S. Challenging male dominance through the substantive representation of women: the case of an online women’s mentoring platform. New Technology, Work and Employment 2020, 35(2), 215-231.
  • Prowse P, Lopes A, Fells R. Community and Union-led Living Wage Campaigns. Employee Relations 2017, 39(6), 825-839.
  • Forkert K, Lopes A. Unwaged posts in UK Universities: Controversies and campaigns. tripleC: Communication, Capitalism and Critique 2015, 13(2), 533-553.
  • Lopes A, Hall T. Organising migrant workers: The living wage campaign at the University of East London. Industrial Relations Journal 2015, 46(3), 208-221.
  • Lopes A, Dewan I. Precarious pedagogies? The impact of casual and zero-hour contracts in Higher Education. Journal of Feminist Scholarship 2014, (7-8), 28-42.

• Book Chapters

  • Durbin S, Lopes A, Warren S, Milne J. Relational Mentoring in the Aviation and Aerospace Industry: Meeting Women’s Needs Through the Alta Mentoring Scheme. In: Tessa Wright Lucy Budd Stephen Ison, ed. Women, Work and Transport. Bingley: Emerald, 2022, pp.169-187.
  • Monroe J, Vincent S, Lopes A. Critical Realist Metatheory and the Sociology of Organisations: Using contrastive explanation to explain personal internet use at work. In: Godwyn, M, ed. Research Handbook on the Sociology of Organizations. Cheltenham, UK: Elgar, 2022, pp.475-490.
  • Durbin S, Lopes A. Will the Head of Engineering Please Stand Up? The Under-representation of Women in Engineering. In: Broadbent, K, ed. Gender and the Professions: International and Contemporary Perspectives. Routledge, 2018, pp.169-184.
  • Lopes A, Hall T. Winning a living wage: the legacy of living wage campaigns. In: Waite, L, ed. Vulnerability, Exploitation and Migrants: Insecure Work in a Globalised Economy. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015, pp.230-243.
  • Lopes A. Sex-workers talking and acting for labour rights: the interview in an action research setting. In: Smith, K; Staples, J; Rapport, N, ed. Extraordinary Encounters: Authenticity and the Interview. Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2015, pp.157-174.

• Editorial

  • Prowse P, Fells R, Arrowsmith J, Parker J, Lopes A. Low pay and the living wage: an international perspective. Employee Relations 2017, 39(6), 778-784.

• Review

  • Lopes A. Austerity and Working-Class Resistance: Survival, Disruption and Creation in Hard Times, Adam Fishwick and Heather Connolly (editors), 2018, London, New York, Rowman & Littlefield International [Book review]. New Technology, Work and Employment 2020, 35(2), 250-251.