Dr Raffaella Valsecchi
Reader

Summary

 Dr Raffaella Valsecchi is Reader (Associate Professor) in Human Resource Management/ Organisational Behaviour at Brunel Business School.  Prior to join Brunel University, she held posts at Greenwich Business School, Royal Holloway- University of London and the University of Leicester. She completed her PhD in Sociology of Work at the University of Leicester, funded by the ESRC.

Raffaella’s research focuses on the management of health and wellbeing at work, the impact of technology on the labour process in health organisations, community wellbeing, students’ experience and health and wellbeing and, flexible working. She has been working in multidisciplinary research projects funded by the ESRC, British Academy/ Leverhulme Trust, Brunel University London Knowledge Transfer Grant, Research Catalyst Fund. She has published in well-known international journals, such as Work, Employment and Society, New Technology and Employment, Technology Forecasting and Social Change, Economic and Industrial Democracy and Employee Relations. She has served in the Editorial Board for the journal European Management Review (2017-2022) and acted as reviewer at the European Academy of Management (EURAM) conference. She an active member of the International Labour Process Conference and, organised and supported a series of conference stream. She is member of European Group for Organisational Studies (EGOS) and she regularly presents papers at EGOS colloquium.  She acts as reviewer for the academic journals: New Technology Work and Employment, Gender, Work and Organization and Technology Forecasting and Social Change and, has been nominated as a reviewer for ESRC projects.   Recently, she has served as guest editor for the Journal Frontiers in Sociology creating the special issue ‘Re-building and re-inventing workplaces’.

Raffaella held numerous successful academic leadership positions, examples of those are Director of PGT programmes, Director of Work Placements, Programme Leader for the MSc HRM and Director of Undergraduate programmes, making substantial positive impact in academic programmes and students’ experience. Her role as Director of PGT programmes was crucial during the recent pandemic and COVID-19 aftermath, where she promptly led and implemented the necessary Teaching & Learning changes, managing a PGT students’ cohort which doubled its intake (800 PGT students- 10 PGT programmes). She has played an important role in key successful accreditations, such as the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB), and the Chartered Institute of Professional Development (CIPD). She is now assisting Brunel University’s organisational change by supporting a series of strategic workshops and mentoring colleagues in leadership positions from BBS other Departments.

Raffaella is Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and Associate Member of the Chartered Institute of Professional Development (CIPD). She also acted as CIPD Director during her position of Programme Leader of the MSc HRM programme, supporting a series of engagement activities with her MSc students and the CIPD.  She is passionate in disseminating her research among her students and, since 2018, she has organised a series of seminars and workshops on managing health and wellbeing at work with Occupational Health professionals, the last two focused of managing employees during the pandemic and the COVID-19 aftermath. She holds a position of external examiner at Bayes Business School and Henley Business School.  She supported and attended two internationalisation/student engagement activities between the MBA Programmes at BBS and University of Bicocca Milan. She was nominated for ‘Best Final Year Project tutor’ (UG students’ nomination -2014); ‘Ken Darby-Dowman memorial prize’ (2020-21); ‘Collaborate & Collegiate working’ (College nomination 2021-2022).

Qualifications

• PhD at The University of Leicester (UK), Department of Sociology: ‘Managing Teleworkers: Exploring the Methods of Control in Three Italian Case Studies’. (Awarded Faculty of Social Sciences -Scholarship of Excellence-The University of Leicester & ‘ESRC’ Economic Social Research Council 2000-2004).

• MA in Social & Cultural Theory, (full-time) at The University of Leicester (UK), Department of Sociology. (Awarded Department of Sociology -Bursary of Excellence -1998-1999)

• Laurea in Scienze Politiche e Sociali-(BSc in Social Sciences and Politics) (part-time) at University of Pavia, (Italy). 110/110 (1st Class Honours) 1992-1999.

• Post-Dipolma in International Marketing at ‘Chamber of Commerce of Pavia’ Awarded EU Scholarship of Excellence, Pavia ( Italy).30/30 (1st Class Honours, with 3 months interships- 1991-1992)