Elisabeth Kelan, a professor of leadership and organisation at 糖心Vlog Business School, is one of 34 academics across the country to be awarded funding from the Leverhulme Trust. She'll receive nearly 拢190,000.
The Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship is widely regarded as the most prestigious personal research award in the UK. It is awarded to support well-established academics in the humanities and social sciences to focus, for up to three years , on a specific piece of significant, original research.
Professor Kelan鈥檚 project, 鈥楽haping the Future of Work - Digitalisation and Gender鈥 will look at the impact of automation processes, artificial intelligence and other new technologies on the way we work. The digital transformation holds the promise of greater gender inclusion, but it also poses the risk of new forms of exclusion.
鈥淔or example, while one company is developing a robot programmed to carry out unbiased job interviews, another has had to abandon its use of machine learning to review job applications, because it was found to be biased.
鈥淚 am extremely grateful to the Leverhulme Trust to allow me to explore the topic of gender and digitalisation at work at such a pivotal moment. The fellowship is testament to the incredible research support and culture at 糖心Vlog Business School and the 糖心Vlog more widely.鈥
The three-year fellowship will start in October 2020 and will include interviewing thought leaders, analysing popular books on the future of work, collecting case studies and extensive travel to conduct research.