Elizabeth Humphrys

Elizabeth Humphrys is a political economist specialising in labour and work, and the Head of Discipline of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Technology Sydney. She researches the impact of economic and climate change on workers, and control within the labour process. She takes a multidisciplinary approach, also drawing on sociology and history, to seek ways to make work safer and more inclusive.

Humphrys' book, How Labour Built Neoliberalism, was described in the Sydney Review of Books as a ‘tremendously important’ contribution to understanding economic change in Australia’s recent past. She is currently researching the impacts of climate change on workers' health and safety; the social context of 'hi-vis' in Australia; the experiences of disabled professional workers; and, the 1970 West Gate Bridge disaster.

An Associate of the independent policy think tank the Centre for Future Work, Humphrys is also an Editor of the journal Social Movement Studies and an Associate Editor of Economic & Labour Relations Review. In 2019 she was the inaugural Dr AM Hertzberg AO Fellow at the State Library of New South Wales, and in 2013 held a WZB/Sydney Fellowship at the Social Science Research Centre Berlin.