Professor Helen Rainbird
Helen Rainbird worked at the Institute for Employment Research, University of Warwick (1983-89,) and the ESRC's Industrial Relations Research Unit, University of Warwick (1989-1993), before taking up a Readership and then Professorship at University College Northampton. She joined Birmingham Business School in October 2004. She has researched and written extensively on the intersection between industrial relations structures and processes and workplace learning policies and practices in organisations. She has a long-standing interest in training and development practices in the public sector and, in particular, the role of union/employer partnerships on learning in supporting the expression of employee voice and access to learning. She has worked on a number of European projects on training institutions and practices and has an interest in comparative research methodology.
She was a member of the ESRC Research Grants Board from 2008-2010 and will be a member of one of the Grant Assessment Panel which replaces it from 2010.
She was co-editor of Work, Employment and Society with Professor Michael Rose (University of Bath) 2005-2007. She has been a member of the editorial board of Sociologia del Trabajo since 1994 and associate editor of the International Journal of Training and Development since 1995.
She has been an Associate Fellow of the Industrial Relations Research Unit, University of Warwick, since 1994 and a member of the Executive Committee of the British Universities' Industrial Relations Association (2003-2009).