Professor Joana Vassilopoulou
Honorary Professor - BBS
Summary
Dr Vassilopoulou is a Professor in EDI & HRM and the Divisional Lead of the Organisations and People Department at Brunel Business School, Brunel University London. Her research focuses on equality, diversity & inclusion, gender, migration, AI & diversity and precarious work from a critical and international comparative perspective. She has been part of grants in the field of diversity and inclusion with a total value of over £2.5 million, such as for the OECD, the European Academy of Management (EURAM), EU Horizon2020 and EU Erasmus+.
She is the Co-Founder of the Centre for Inclusion at Work (CEFI), in Athens, Greece: https://www.inclusionatwork.eu/
Joana Vassilopoulou has an established academic and professional record in the field of diversity and inclusion, is frequently invited to deliver talks and has organised and hosted the international Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) conference twice. Joana was an editor at the Work, Employment and Society (WES) Journal from 2020 to 2024 and from 2015 to 2020, she served as an Associate Editor of the European Management Review (EMR). She was a board member of the European Academy of Management (EURAM) and the UK National Representative of EURAM. She has published over 50 publications in edited collections and journals such as Human Resource Management Journal, Work, Employment and Society, European Journal of Industrial Relations, International Business Review and the International Journal of Human Resource Management.
She is an associated faculty member at the Erasmus Centre for Women and Organisations, Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University, Rotterdam/Netherlands, and she has held visiting Professorships at Dauphine University, Paris /France, MCI Innsbruck (Austria), and the University of Wuppertal (Germany).
Dr Vassilopoulou is the recipient of a visiting scholarship at Sydney University’s business school (2017), the winner of the Transnational Best Paper Award at the American Academy of Management conference (2012), and the recipient of the University of East Anglia’s Norwich Business School Diversity and Equality in Careers and Employment Research PhD scholarship (2007-2010).
She has a PhD from Norwich Business School, University of East Anglia and her Social Science/Sociology degree from the University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany.
Responsibility
Professor in EDI & HRM
Divisional Lead of the Organisations and People Department
Newest selected publications
Ozgoren, C., Karatas Ozkan, M., Özbilgin, M., Kamasak, R., Sayin, E. and Vassilopoulou, J. (2025) 'Refugee entrepreneurs: Typologies of emancipation and impact'. International Small Business Journal, 0 (ahead of print). pp. 1 - 31. ISSN: 0264-6560 Open Access Link
Hamza-Orlinska, A., Maj, J., Shantz, A. and Vassilopoulou, J. (2024) 'Unlearning diversity management'. Journal of World Business, 59 (2). pp. 101519 - 101519. ISSN: 1090-9516
Groutsis, D., Vassilopoulou, J., Özbilgin, M., Fujimoto, Y. and Mor Barak, M. (2023) 'FROM THE EDITORS—Migration Management: Introduction and Overview'. Academy of Management Discoveries, 9 (2). pp. 117 - 124.Open Access Link
Kamasak, R., Özbilgin, M., April, K., Yavuz Sercekman, M. and Vassilopoulou, J. (2023) '‘We Can’t Go Back to Normal’: Global Value Chain Approach to Diversity Management in Multinational Enterprises', in Maheshkar, C. and Sharma, V. (eds.) Handbook of Research on Cross-cultural Business and Management. Wilmington, DE, USA : Vernon Press. pp. 229 - 263. ISBN 10: 1-64889-686-3. ISBN 13: 978-1-64889-601-9.
Saba, T., Vassilopoulou, J., Ng, E. and Özbilgin, M. (2022) 'Guest editorial: Crossing boundaries and strengthening social connections through improved professional integration of immigrants'. Equality, Diversity and Inclusion, 41 (7). pp. 953 - 958. ISSN: 2040-7149 Open Access Link