Alan Felstead

Alan is a Professor at Cardiff School of Social Sciences, Cardiff University.

Telephone: +44 (0)292 0879 050

Fax: +44 (0)292 0879 050

Research Interests:

Training, skills and learning;
The spaces and places of employment;
The quality of work;
Non-standard forms of employment;
Quantitative and qualitative research methods.

Career Overview:

Professor Alan Felstead has degrees from the University of Cambridge, the University of Warwick and Imperial College, University of London. He has held positions at Nuffield College, University of Oxford and the University of Leicester. Currently, he is Research Professor at Cardiff School of Social Sciences, Cardiff University. His research focuses on: the quality of work; training, skills and learning; non-standard employment; and the spaces and places of work. Professor Felstead has completed over 30 funded research projects (including eleven funded by the Economic and Social Research Council), produced six books, and written over 200 journal articles, book chapters, research reports and discussion papers (not all listed on web site). He has generated research income of £5.4 million with grants from, for example, the ESRC, UK government departments, the European Union and the European Centre for the Development of Vocational Training (CEDEFOP). He has delivered many keynote addresses to conferences around the world, including China, Singapore, South Africa, Australia and Europe, and given labour market advice to policy-makers inside and outside the UK. Professor Felstead’s most recent book, Improving Working as Learning (with Fuller, A, Jewson, N and Unwin, L), London: Routledge, 2009, won a prestigious prize from the Society for Educational Studies awarded for books published that year. Changing Places of Work (with Jewson, N and Walters, S), London: Palgrave, 2005, has also made a significant and lasting impression, with one reviewer rating it as a ‘significant book’ prompting us to ‘rediscover and rethink the socio-spatial organization of work’. He has been Visiting Professor at the ESRC Centre for Learning and Life Chances in Knowledge Economies and Societies (LLAKES), Institute of Education, University of London since 2009, he was appointed Academician of the Academy of the Social Sciences (AcSS) in 2011, and is currently a member of the ESRC’s Peer Review College.

Current Projects:

ESRC – ‘Skills and Employment Survey 2012’ (RES-241-25-0001), under the ESRC/UKCES Strategic Partnership with additional funding from WISERD (Principal Applicant with Duncan Gallie and Francis Green). £808,877.

The Skills and Employment Survey 2012 (SES2012) is a national study of people aged 20-65 who are in paid work. The survey focuses upon the work that people do and how working life has changed over time. The 2012 survey is the latest in a series of studies which began in 1986. It anticipated that around 3,170 respondents will take part in the 2012 survey.

More on the project
ESRC – ‘Training in Recession: Historical, Comparative and Case Study Perspectives’ (RES-594-28-0001), under the ESRC/UKCES Strategic Partnership (Principal Applicant with Francis Green). £201,589.

This project seeks to analyze, compare and explain the impact of the current recession on training in the UK and, in particular, its impact on the long-term ambition of making the UK a world leader in skills, employment and productivity by 2020.