Professor Barbara Pocock has researched work and employment relations for more than thirty years. She has worked for Australian governments, community organisations, and universities including the University of Adelaide and the University of South Australia. She founded and led the Centre for Work + Life at the University of South Australia between 2006 and 2014.

Barbara has worked in many jobs - in shearing sheds, advising politicians, for governments, on farms, in unions, writing, teaching and researching in universities, and as a mother.

Barbara was initially trained as an economist, completed her doctorate in gender studies, and taught and researched labour studies and social science from the mid-1980s to 2014. She became a fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in 2008 and in 2010 was made a member of the Order of Australia (AM) for services to industrial relations research and for advocacy of social justice.  She has presented her research in many countries.

Her research has focussed upon work, employment relations, gender, trade unionism, pay and pay equity, vocational education and inequality in the labour market. As Director of the Centre for Work + Life (2006-2014) - and working with a team of researchers at the Centre - she undertook research on work set within its social location, analysing the way in which work affects us as workers and beyond the workplace - in the household, community and wider society. She has been the recipient of many grants and was awarded a Queen Elizabeth II Fellowship to study the intersections between work, family and community for 5 years, 2003-2007. She lives in Adelaide, South Australia, and is a mother of two.

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