Working Lives Research Institute
My name is Dan Dowling, and I'm the head of business development for a welfare to work provider called to Inspire to Independence.
I started the DProf course because I wanted a theoretical perspective behind the world of work. It was as simple and as general as that.
As the course has gone on the taught modules have enabled me to have a thorough understanding of the background that underpins my industry and it has been truly excellent in terms of innovation and my projects.
My name is Jennifer Akinsuyi. I work as an IT consultant in the financial services industry.
The reasons I’m doing this DProf is because I’m looking to change my career. I've been working in IT for about 14 years and I’ve always been intrigued by the concept of work, especially in an individual and organisational sense.
I decided to undertake the DProf to give me a theoretical background. I hope to eventually publish my research. I'm a strong believer in acquiring knowledge and lifelong learning is a continuous activity so I’m one of those people that always wants to learn. So that's another reason why I’m doing the doctorate as well.
Jennifer Akinsuyi's first published work can be downloaded in pdf version here.
Tapping into Your Capital Resources.pdf
My name is Nigel Carter. I'm a community development worker for the NHS in Oxfordshire.
My discovery of Working Lives Research Institute and the course was this: I had completed a public history course, an MA at Ruskin College, and I liked the values of Ruskin - the trade union links and the links to the labour movement and also its ideas about encouraging more participative learning. I really enjoyed that course and as a member of UNISON I was thinking, I need something else to do with links to my work. I wanted to continue studying but do something related to my work practice and my involvement in terms of my trade union activism and my community involvement.
I enjoy the discipline of individual study but as well, there is the idea that we are part of a learning community. The seminars that the WLRI puts on brings in people from different disciplines, from different occupational backgrounds, so it's really dynamic.
My name is Tish Gibbons. I'm a trade union researcher in Ireland.
I suppose I flew over twenty universities to get to Working Lives. It was a very deliberate choice to do the DProf with Working Lives. I think the ethos of the Institute was really important. And the work of WLRI has a resonance for the work that I do.
Doing the DProf at WLRI meant that I could match my working life and my academic life. It has brought both of them together very well for me.
I’m Chris Blunkell, I’m a freelance writer I do lots of work with the Research Council but I'm also a community campaigner on the subject of coastal communities and social justice in the light of climate change and government policy.
I'm here because I wanted to study the social justice implications of that and I wanted to write about them through an exploration of the experiences of the communities and the people that represent them. Being able to broaden my theoretical understanding of some of those implications before going out and asking questions and analysing those has been very, very useful. The teaching team here is very sympathetic to the various places that people come from both in terms of their experiences and the jobs that they do. And I would say that they probably leave no stone unturned in actually trying to bring people along to some sort of accommodation with what this kind of work requires. It's very impressive.
Find out more about the DProf in Researching Work.