Professor Jane Parry

Qualitative research methods

The sociology of work and organaisations

Strategic human resource management in a pandemic economy

Jane is an Professor of Work and Employment at Southampton Business School. She is seconded to the UK Parliament 2024-2026 for 3 days a week to work as Thematic Research Lead in Business, Economics and Trade.

Jane is a sociologist of work and applied qualitative researcher, who has managed projects for a range of funding bodies and government departments over the past two decades, raising £1.5m in research revenue. Her research looks at how employment changing within different occupations, as well as how disadvantage operates within labour markets, with a particular focus on life course factors, hybrid, and flexible working.  She was a co-editor of Blackwell's A New Sociology of Work? and of Routledge's Sociology, Work and Organisations: A global perspective.

Jane came to an academic career from starting out as a researcher for Peter Hain PC. She is particularly concerned with producing impactful research, and involving policymakers and practitioners to ensure that that policy is continually informed by high-quality evidence. She regularly contributes to Government consultations and inquiries. Her research on independent living was taken up by the Minister for Pensions to inform the then Link Age strategy, and she has run a roundtable at Portcullis House on flexible work sponsored by the Shadow Minister for Work and Pensions. She has worked for clients including the Health and Safety Executive, Joseph Rowntree Foundation, Economic and Social Research Council, and, on many occasions, the DWP. She has recently sat on BEIS working group on The Future of Work.

Jane is a former Parliamentary Academic Fellow for the Parliamentary Office for Science and Technology (POST), and led Work After Lockdown, a cross-institutional project funded by the UKRI/ESRC, that followed organisations and individuals who were negotiating change following COVID-19 driven working from home. She has continued this interest in hybrid and flexible working, recently conducting research for Acas on how different sectors use flexible working in a combination of statutory and informal ways, and is currently looking at the links between young people's use of different workspaces, and their productivity, learning, and well-being. She has contributed to various Radio 4 and BBC programmes, The Financial Times, Times, and written for The Guardian on future of work debates.

She is Co-I on a current project funded by the British Academy looking at female entrepreneurs' working practices in the Global South.