Luke Nolan

Profile

I am a postgraduate researcher with the department of People, Work and Employment at Leeds University Business School. I joined the PhD programme in October 2024, funded by a departmental scholarship. My interest in work and employment grew from my experiences of work in the service economy for over ten years. I am passionate about both learning and teaching sociology, and hope to contribute to our understanding of the social world through my research.

Research interests

My PhD project is investigating how the values of worker cooperatives are retained and regenerated at the level of the individual. Specifically, I am exploring how cooperative workers’ subjective relationships to their employment are informed by, and inform, participation in labour organised according to cooperative principles. To achieve this, cooperative workers’ perceptions of their labour will be conceptualised through the lens of structural, cultural, and occupational class identities to provide a novel understanding of the role that subjective understandings of inequality play in the construction of successful cooperative working structures.

Beyond my PhD project, some of my other research interests include:

• The green economy and just transitions
• The future of work and work-life enrichment
• Identity work and occupational identities
• Democratic participation and autonomy at work
• Participatory research methods

Qualifications

• BA Sociology, The Open University 2023
• MA Social Research, The University of Leeds 2024

Research groups and institutes

• Centre for Employment Relations, Innovation and Change