People

Co-leaders

Associate Professor Victor Gekara, is Associate Professor in the School of Business IT and Logistics at RMIT University. His research interests are diversely located within the Sociology, Political Economy and Management disciplines. Specifically, his research focuses on industrial transformations, as a result of changing technologies and global economic shifts, and the impact on the future of work, workforce skills and employment.

Associate Professor Darryn Snell is Associate Professor in the School of Management at RMIT University. His research focuses on employment and skills development questions related to structural adjustment, industrial transition and regional regeneration. He is particularly interested in the ways skills facilitate occupational mobility and the process and actors involved in connecting people to work when they are confronted with job loss and career change. The differences in disadvantaged worker experiences in urban versus regional contexts is a focus of this research.

Core members

Professor John Burgess is professor of Human Resource Management in the School of Management at RMIT University. His research examines contingent employment and labour regulation; human resource development; graduate work readiness, the implications of the emerging gig economy, job quality and work in the aged care sector.

Professor Peter Kelly is a sociologist of youth, education and work who has published extensively on young people, globalization, education and work. His current research interests include a critical engagement with young people’s well-being, resilience and enterprise in what has been called the Anthropocene.

Professor Alemayehu Molla is Professor of information systems with a focus on sustainable digital business. He has a track record of undertaking industry research projects including on digital disruption and skills for consumers and workers funded by the Australian Communication Consumers Action Network and the National Centre for Vocational Education Research.

Professor Alan Nankervis is a adjunct Professor of Human Resource Management in the School of Management at Curtin & RMIT Universities. He has more than thirty years’ academic experience at three universities in Australia, and in the UK, Canada, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore and Thailand, together with consultancies in Indonesia, China and Thailand. He was the Director of the Sydney Graduate School of Management, Research Director and Head of HRM at Curtin University. He is currently the Chair of the Australian Human Resources Institute’s (AHRI) National Program Accreditation Committee.

Professor Pauline Stanton’s research focuses on workforce innovation and human resource development. While most of her work has focused on the Australian healthcare sector she has also studied employment relations practices in MNEs and HRM issues in Vietnam, China, Singapore and Saudi Arabia.

Dr Seth Brown is at UNESCO UNEVOC at RMIT University and a Lecturer in the School of Education. His research is focused on young people, work and vocational education and training with a particular interest in the educational ecologies of well-being, resilience, and enterprise. Seth's most recent co-authored book (to be released in 2020) Belonging, identity and time, and young people’s engagement in the middle years of school examines the ongoing, significant and challenging academic, community and policy discussion about young people’s engagement and disengagement in the middle years of schooling.

Dr Shane Duggan is in the School of Education, RMIT University. His work explores how young people understand and engage in with education and learning in the context of the digital disruption of life and work. He has appeared in national print and broadcast media and has contributed to reforms to higher education admissions policy in Australia. Shane’s first book Hacking the Future: Young people, digital disruption and the future of education examines how young people’s lives are framed within the context of digital disruption.

Dr Alan Montague is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Management at RMIT University. His research, experience, and publications are linked to skill/vocational shortages, government policies relating to the links between education and industry, employment/education program policy development, and management and workforce planning, and critical commentary on corporate ethics and the impact of artificial intelligence on organisations and jobs. His research is undertaken predominantly through the lens of human resource management (HRM).

Dr Michael Muchiri is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Management at RMIT University. Michael’s research focuses on positive organisational behaviour, and especially how various forms of leadership enhance or inhibit job performance, employee thriving, employee citizenship and proactive behaviours, engagement, organisational virtuousness, psychological capital, workplace conflict, workplace safety and counterproductive work behaviours. Michael’s ongoing research is funded by the Melbourne City Council and Small Business Victoria.

Dr Lena Wang is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Management at RMIT University. Her areas of research and teaching interests include work psychology and organisational behavior, with particular focus on leadership, personality, diversity, and employee wellbeing. At the moment, 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.

Acknowledgement of Country

RMIT University acknowledges the people of the Woi wurrung and Boon wurrung language groups of the eastern Kulin Nation on whose unceded lands we conduct the business of the University. RMIT University respectfully acknowledges their Ancestors and Elders, past and present. RMIT also acknowledges the Traditional Custodians and their Ancestors of the lands and waters across Australia where we conduct our business - Artwork 'Sentient' by Hollie Johnson, Gunaikurnai and Monero Ngarigo.

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Acknowledgement of Country

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