Professor Gabriella Alberti

Profile

Academic background and biography

Gabriella Alberti (BA, MSc, PhD) is a Professor of Internal Labour Migration at the University of Leeds Business School, People Work and Employment Department. Member of the Centre for Employment Relations Innovation and Change , she is also the co- founder of the Leeds Migration Research Network, which brings together researchers and practitioners in the region and globally to promote interdisciplinary collaborations and impact-oriented research on international migration and minoritised groups.

Graduated from the University of Bologna, School of Politics Institutions and History (2006), she completed her MSc in Social Sciences Research Methods at Cardiff University (20111). During her master studies she worked at the European Parliament, Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs and previously at the International Labour Office in Geneva on forced labour and migration. Gabriella obtained her PhD in Social Sciences at the University of Cardiff with a thesis on Migrant Women's Everyday Politics in London’s Hospitality Industry. Upon completion of the PhD in 2011 Gabriela was awarded an ESRC Post-Doctoral Research Fellowship at the School of Business and Management, Queen Mary University of London. Gabriella has worked at Leeds Business School since 2012. She was promoted to Associate Professor in Work and Employment Relations and to Professor in March 2025.
Her approach to the study of employment, labour migration and diversity draws from the sociology of work and employment relations, labour geography and organisation studies. Her research interests revolve around the questions of transnational labour mobility, precarious work and their implications for changing employment relations, migrant intersectionalities trade unions renewal and movements for social and environmental justice.
Through her interdisciplinary background and activist research, Gabriella developed an unconventional perspective to management studies, with particular attention to migration, racial and gender equality at work for precarious and contingent workers without social protection. For several years I have been an elected member of the University College Union branch committee, with a focus on equalities and climate action. She is a core member of the University Sanctuary Steering group.

Responsibilities
• Academic staff (teaching and research)
• Teaching, Human Resource Management (UG &PG)
• Research, People Work and Employment Department
• Co-Director of Postgraduate Research Studies

Responsibilities

• Academic staff (teaching and research)
• Teaching, Human Resource Management (UG &PG)
• Research, People Work and Employment Department

Research interests

My research interests revolve around the conditions of workers at the bottom end of the labour market, whether on non-standard contracts, engaged in gig/platform work, excluded from social protections, migrants and minorities workers facing multiple and intersectional forms of discrimination and exclusion.I am particularly interested in the forms of agency and resistance that workers build individually and collectively, despite their precarious status, as I explored in my past and recent publications in international peer-reviewed journals such as Work Employment and Society, the International Journal of Human Resource Management, Economic and Industrial Democracy, the British Journal of Industrial Relations, Working USA, Work and Occupations, Organization, Global Labour Journal. My qualitative research explores migrant precarious employment, intra-EU mobility, migration and temporary agencies, transnational labour mobility, trade unions strategies with migrant and gig workers, community organising, union renewal, and more recently the impact of post-Brexit migration policy on sectors hit by the Covid-19 pandemic.

I have recently published by first monograph with Professor Devi Sacchetto (The Politics of Migrant Labour, Bristol University Press 2024) and co-edited the forthcoming volume Migration and Social Reproduction (Edward Elgar Publishing 2025). My co-edited special issue in Organization (2025) Intersectionality and precarious subjectivities: Within and beyond labour and organisational perspectives, with: A. Peticca-Harris, A. Murgia, and M. Ivancheva is a collection of cutting edge research on the ongoing question of intersectional precariousness under polycrisis across the Global North and South.

Selected funded research

2025 Bridging the gap between employers and marginalised migrants: co-creating the Y&H Employer Engagement Platform (£14, 991) (PI)ESRC Impact Acceleration Account

2021-2024 “Labour mobility in Transition: a mulit-actor study of the re-regulation of migrant work in “low-skilled” sectors awarded May 2021. ESRC Standard Grant (£986,203) (PI). Project webpage https://business.leeds.ac.uk/dir-record/research-projects/1870/labour-mobility-in-transition-a-multi-actor-study-of-the-re-regulation-of-migrant-work-in-low-skilled-sectors-limits

2019: Responding to Brexit before Brexit: navigating the work and labour market impacts of the 2016 EU referendum Leeds Social Sciences Institute / ESRC Impact Acceleration Account, CO-I (£14,402.50) 2018

2017:-2020 Evaluation of the Migrant Access Project Plus’, a Joint proposal with the Centre for Health Promotion Research Leeds Beckett University), Leeds City Council (PI Louise Warwick-Booth), £25,000. See Final Report here, with Chris Fode.

May 2019: Sadler Seminar Series, "Migration and the City: Imagining and Making Urban Lives", LHRI University of Leeds (with Giorgia Aiello and Helen Kim, School of Media and Communication),£ 2,000

November 2018: The impact of Brexit on employers and employment rights, Leeds University Business School Seedcorn Funding for External Grant, PI (with Jo Cutter, Zyama Ciupijus, Ioulia Bessa and Chris Forde) £1,980

May 2017: ESRC Brexit / Industrial Strategy Challenge fund on ‘Migration, equality and social cohesion: promoting inter-community dialogue in times of change: focus on Brexit’, PI, £ 5,600 (External partner: Leeds City Council). See Report of Final event Migrant Voices in Dialogue with the City

December 2016: Social protection for workers in the collaborative economy CERIC (PI Chris Forde and Mark Stuart) as part of the European Parliament Tender for a multiple framework service agreement with the Employment and Social Affairs Committee, £130,000

November 2016-January 2018 Migration, equality and social cohesion: promoting inter-community dialogue in times of change. Leeds Social Sciences Institute, Responsive Mode Fund (IAA funding £8,500, total value of the project 10,000) with Chris Forde (WERD) and Louise Waite (Geography) External partner: Leeds City Council.

September 2015-ongoing Migration, Development and Global Transformations (MDGT) World University Network research development fund (RDF) (with Chris Forde) £11,000 (as part of larger WUN RDF, PI Ann Singleton, Bristol University)

September 2014-April 2015: EU Social and Labour Rights and EU Internal Market Law (PI Professor Dagmar Schiek, Queen University Belfast) See http://lubswww.leeds.ac.uk/ceric/eu-social-rightsinternal-market-law/ (Total grant. £114,555) See here the Final Report for the European Parliament

Doctoral research supervision and opportunities:

My activity in the Centre for Employment Relations Innovation and Change at LUBS involves collaborative research on migration and labour mobility in a transnational perspective, trade unions, employee voice and collective action in precarious employment (including in outsourcing, platform and gig work). With Professor Chris Forde, Professor Jane Holgate, Jo Cutter, Dr Zynovijus Ciupijus, Dr Liz Oliver we are currently interested in supervising doctoral projects related to:

• Migrant labour in low-paid sectors
• The management of migration: labour and migration policy regimes
• Precarious employment and intersectionality
• Transnational mobility and temporary staffing agencies
• Migration and HRM strategies (pay, turnover and retention, skills and training)
• Restriction of free movement and impact on work and employment
• Community organizing, trade union renewal and social movement unionism
• Workforce diversity, equality, intersectionality
• The hospitality industry and low-paid service sector employment
• Climate action and workers rights
• Post-Brexit labour migration
• Labour Migration and Skills

If you would like to contact me about a proposal or application, please do so via email: g.alberti@leeds.ac.uk

Qualifications

• 2011 PhD in Social Sciences, Cardiff University
• 2007: MSc Social Sciences Research Methods, Cardiff University
• 2006: BA Political Sciences, First Class, Department of Politics, University of Bologna

Professional memberships

• 2018 -to date Member of the Board of the Leeds Social Sciences Research Institute
• 2019-to date: Associate Member of Editorial Board of the journal Frontiers of Sociology, Work and Organisation
• May 2012- present: Member of the Centre for Employment, Innovation and Change, Leeds University Business School
• 2011-present: member of the academic European network Immigration, Immigrants and Trade Unions in Europe (IITUE)
• October 2016-ongoing: Doctoral academy board of the University of Padua, Department of Sociology
• September 2015-present: Member and co-founder of the Leeds Migration Research Network, University of Leeds

Student education

2017-2020 Programme Director of the MA in HRM

Module taught

• LUBS5330M - Human Resource Management Core Course (MA HRM)
• LUBS5339M - International Employment Policy and Labour Mobility (MA HRM)
• LUBS5376M - HRM Dissertation (MA HRM)
• LUBS3311 - Human Resource Management Dissertation (BA HRM)
• LUBS2000 - Management, Work and Organisations (BA HRM)
• LUBS2060 - Contemporary Industrial Relations (BA HRM)
• LUBS1755 - Business and Society (Combined) (BA HRM)

New modules (2020-ongoing)

Sustainable Futures,

Digitalisation and the Future of Work (MA HRM, MSc Consulting)

Global Perspectives on Work (MA HRM, MSc Consulting, UG HMR)

Research groups and institutes

• Centre for Employment Relations, Innovation and Change

Current postgraduate researchers

• Kiril Pasevin
• Walid Mousa
• Laura Rosa Berro Yoldi