ProfessorSusan McGrath-Champ

Susan has led successive landmark studies into the effects of competition, choice and policy shifts on school teachers' work and working conditions throughout Australia, with particular focus on the state of New South Wales, partnered also with Western Australia and Sweden. Her research extends perspectives to understand schools not only as places of learning but also places of work and employment. As co-chief investigator on a decade-long international research collaboration grant, she established and coordinated an interdisciplinary, multi-institutional research team enabling deep insights into the complex challenges associated with teachers' work, and has ongoing industry collaborations in this area with organisations which are supporting and implementing the research findings.

Susan has forged new understandings of the role of labour (workers) in Global Production Networks (supply chains). This includes theorising the interconnection between global production processes and disassembly and reuse of the world's waste within a 'circular economy' frame.

Susan's global mobility and crisis management research provides new human resource management conceptualisation concerning the safety and security of international assignees ('expatriates') in times of crisis and the evolving HR function within organisations.

As sole or lead chief investigator on Australian Research Council projects, Susan has analysed the spatial aspects of enterprise agreements, examined training, migration and global aspects of the Australian construction industry and analysed restructuring of the coal industry. She was recipient of an Australian Academy of Social Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences exchange, through which she researched performance management aspects of international assignments within international and global firms.

Susan's work is published widely in journals including Journal of Industrial Relations, Work, Employment and Society, International Journal of Human Resource Management, Journal of Education Policy, Journal of Professions and Organization, Environment and Planning A, and Journal of Economic Geography. Her books include the groundbreaking international Handbook of Employment and Society, Working Space (2010) and Industry 4.0 and the Future of Work: Global Production Networks, Global Disassembly Networks, and the Circular Economy (2024) (with Andrew Herod and Al Rainnie).