About

Elizabeth Humphrys

Dr Elizabeth Humphrys is a political economist and the Head of Discipline of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS). She is interested in the impact of economic crisis and climate change on workers, and how workplaces can be made safer and more equitable. She takes a multidisciplinary approach — drawing also on sociology and history — to develop policy and strategies for social change.

Her research focusses on work health and safety and questions of control over the labour process. A member of the UTS Climate, Society and Environment Research Centre (C-SERC), she leads the centre’s research on climate change impacts for workers.

Her first book, How Labour Built Neoliberalism, was described in the Sydney Review of Books as a ‘tremendously important’ contribution to understanding economic change in Australia’s recent past.

Her current projects investigate:

— The impact of climate change on workers, such as increasing heat and bushfire smoke, and the politics of workplace adaptation to global warming (Too Hot to Work).

— An investigation of the history and memorialisation of the West Gate Bridge disaster, which killed 35 construction workers in 1970 and injured many more (The West Gate Project).

— The experiences of disabled academics in universities.

Elizabeth is an Associate of the Centre for Future Work at The Australia Institute, an editor of Social Movement Studies, and a Coordinating Editor of the Economic and Labour Relations Review.  She was the inaugural Dr A M Hertzberg fellow at the State Library of NSW in 2019, and in 2013 held a WZB/Sydney Fellowship at the WZB Social Science Research Centre Berlin.

Prior to being an academic Elizabeth worked in research and policy for a number of universities and non-government organisations, as an advisor to a member of parliament, and as an investigator for the NSW Ombudsman.