Quick Colleague Catch-up - Dr. Shireen Kanji

You may recall in the previous newsletter we informed you that Shireen Kanji had joined the School in early January as a Reader in the Department of Organisation. Shireen would like to share a little information with you -

‘I joined Birmingham Business School from the University of Leicester Business School in January 2017. I have previously held academic posts at the University of Basel and the University of Cambridge where I was a Lecturer in Sociology and, later, a Research Fellow funded by the Leverhulme and Isaac Newton Trusts.

My research is situated in the intersection of social inequality, gender and work. I am particularly interested in the links between paid and unpaid work. My aim has been to make visible how unpaid work, in its diverse forms, facilitates and is necessary for paid work to take place. I’ve conducted quantitative research analysing the Millennium Cohort Study, the German Socio-Economic Panel, the European Social Survey and the European Structure of Earnings Survey. In this quantitative research I have examined the forces driving men’s hours of work and their feelings of overwork and underwork.  I have analysed the contribution of sector and occupation to earnings inequality in Europe. Finally, I have recently been examining the impact of precarious work on young workers’ wellbeing in Germany using latent growth curve models.  I’ve also conducted qualitative work based on interviews with mothers about their career paths and movements into and out of work, a topic that continues to occupy my research. Another strand to my qualitative research uses discussion threads from internet discussion sites.

At the University of Birmingham, I’m planning to conduct new research into women expatriates, to continue my research into precarious types of work and further develop my research into how parents manage to combine work and care. I’m looking forward to working with colleagues at Birmingham. Please do come and say hello to me in Room 129 and please do let me know if we have research interests in common which we can pursue further together.’