The CPOW is a growing collaboration between passionate, engaged and diverse values-driven researchers.
Researcher Profiles
Dr Louise Byrne is a researcher with deep knowledge of organisational issues relevant to ‘lived experience’ mental health employment. Louise’s work is informed by her own experiences of mental health diagnosis, service use and periods of healing. Louise is employed as the inaugural RMIT Fulbright Fellow, in the School of Management.. Louise was awarded a Fulbright Postdoctoral Scholarship in 2017 to conduct research on lived experience employment in the United States, based at Yale University. Louise has been a Chief Investigator on projects with a combined total of $1.7 million in external grants and authored nearly 40 refereed journal articles, book chapters and industry reports. Louise’s work frequently informs policy. In recognition of her work in this area, Louise has received several industry and academic awards and been featured on respected national media, including Radio National ‘Life Matters’ and ABC’s ‘Q&A’.
Dr Cameron Duff is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Management at RMIT University in Melbourne. Grounded in political science, and with a strong commitment to interdisciplinarity, his research program has three main areas of activity: (A) theoretically informed investigations of ‘social context’, place and community; (B) empirical investigations of the ways notions of ‘place’ and ‘community’ are mobilised in social innovations in the community sector; and (C) organisational studies focusing on the role of workforce development and program delivery in the design of innovative housing and/or mental health supports. Across these activities, he has been especially interested in how social innovation drives social change in the community and not-for-profit sectors, with a focus on housing policy and mental health care.
Prof Peter Fairbrother focuses on the political economy of work futures, bringing together two dimensions: first on collective organisation and representation, and second the changing patterns and relations of work and employment in different political contexts. He is a leading international scholar (Australia and the UK) on the theory and empirical study of union renewal. Peter has developed a particular conceptualisation of renewal, recently elaborated in relation to unions as development actors and unions in transition. He also has taken a lead in elaborating a political economy of skills development and occupational restructuring in traditional industrial economies, in the United Kingdom, across Europe and in Australia, considering the political economy of work practices and futures. His recent focus is on new jobs, relations and identities enabled by the digital economy. Most recently, Peter is a lead RMIT/Victorian researcher on the Cooperative Research Centre (CRC) Award on Food Agility with digital innovation a core focus.
Dr Kate Farhall is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the School of Management. Her research focusses on violence against women, gender inequality, and the relationships between men and women, and the spheres of work, home and community in which they are embedded. Kate’s primary research examines how non-metropolitan experiences and geographies impact the intersection of domestic/family violence (DFV) and work. It contributes much-needed data regarding the ways in which rurality and regional experiences alter the impacts of DFV on work, with ramifications for workplace and government responses. Kate also provides gender-related expertise across a variety of projects looking at regional labour markets, agricultural development, and workplace diversity and inclusion approaches. Her work is interdisciplinary, drawing on political science, sociology, communications and industrial relations.
Originally a Social Anthropologist (Cambridge), with a Masters in Politics of the World Economy (London School of Economics), Dr Kate Grosser returned to academia in 2003 to explore the rapidly expanding field of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and corporate governance from a gender perspective. After conducting several research projects, she studied for her PhD at the International Centre for Corporate Social Responsibility, Nottingham University Business School (2011). Her research has examined: the relationship between gender mainstreaming and CSR; the gender content of CSR reporting and stakeholder accountability processes; and pluralism within CSR governance from a gender perspective. She is currently exploring the contribution of feminist organisation theory to CSR, and the relationship between CSR and feminist activism through a social movement theory lens. She is also involved in collaborative research on the role of culture in sustainable development practice in Australia.
Dr Stan Karanasios is a Senior Research Fellow in the School of Business Information Technology and Logistics. He has published in leading information systems and management journals including MIS Quarterly, Information Systems Journal, European Journal on Information Systems and Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology. He has managed large scale European Union grants and been invited to present his work at a number of international forums. He holds a visiting position at the University of Leeds in the UK.
Dr Fiona Macdonald is a Vice-Chancellor’s Senior Research Fellow in the School of Management. Fiona’s research focuses on three interconnected themes: the changing nature of work and employment relationships; regulating for gender in employment; and the political economy of work. The empirical focus of Fiona’s current research on the social care workforce also brings in her interest in social policy and welfare systems. In 2016 Fiona was awarded an Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Researcher Award to examine the workforce challenges of Australia’s new National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS). Her research has strong policy relevance and she works closely with industry as well as with national and international networks of scholars on work and care. She is a member of the Editorial Advisory Board of the International Journal of Care and Caring. In 2017 Fiona was awarded the RMIT Vice-Chancellor’s Award for Research impact – Early Career Researcher.
Dr Meagan Tyler is a Senior lecturer in the School of Management. Her research interests are based mainly around feminist theory and gender inequality in a range of contexts. Her work in these areas has been widely published, including in Rural Studies, Women’s Studies International Forum, Violence Against Women, and Women and Therapy as well as several edited collections including ‘Everyday Pornography’ (Boyle ed., 2010) and ‘Prostitution, Harm and Gender Inequality’ (Coy ed., 2012) and ‘Freedom Fallacy:The Limits of Liberal Feminism’ (Kiraly & Tyler, ed. 2015).
Dr Ying (Lena) Wang is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Management. She teaches and researches in areas of work psychology and organisational behaviour, with particular focus on personality, employee proactivity, leadership, and diversity management. She also has over 10 years of consulting experience on a wide range of areas, including leadership training and development, psychometric testing, talent assessment and management, among others. Lena has authored over 30 international journal articles, book chapters, and commissioned reports for government and industry, and has attracted over $600,000 external grants from government and industry. Currently, Lena is working on a number of projects funded by the Victoria’s Department of Premier and Cabinet and Queensland Mental Health Commission in the area of leadership and organisational capability development.
