Nicole Gillespie

Nicole is a leading international authority on trust in organisations, a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia, and an International Research Fellow at the Centre for Corporate Reputation at the University of Oxford.

Trained as an organizational psychologist, Nicole’s research over the past 25 years has focused on developing and repairing trust in organisations. A feature of her research is examining trust in contexts where it is challenged, such as in emerging technologies, after a trust failure, in complex stakeholder environments, in virtual services, and during organizational change. A focus of her current research is public trust and attitudes towards in Artificial Intelligence (AI). She recently conducted a large global survey to understand public and employee trust, use and attitudes towards AI.

Nicole has written commissioned reports and case studies on building and repairing stakeholder trust for the UK Institute of Business Ethics, the Canadian Institute of Corporate Directors and a policy note for the UK Parliament on restoring trust in the financial sector after the global financial crisis, and multiple reports with industry, including on Achieving Trustworthy AI and Trust in Artificial Intelligence.

Her research appears in leading international journals, including the Academy of Management Review, Journal of Management, Journal of Applied Psychology, Organization Studies, Accounting Organization and Society, Business Ethics Quarterly, Human Resource Management, Sloan Management Review, Work and Stress, and Behavioral Science and Policy, as well as in books and book chapters. Her work has been extensively presented in Europe, the USA, the UK and Australia. Current research projects focus on trust in AI, understanding stakeholder trust in organizations and industries, and the repair of trust. She is on the Editorial Boards of Leadership Quarterly and the Journal of Trust Research.

Nicole has over twenty years experience leading MBA, Executive MBA, specialist masters and undergraduate courses. She has consulted and researched on organisational trust, leadership and wellbeing in a range of public and private sector organisations.In 2019, Nicole was made an Academic Fellow of the Australian and New Zealand School of Government for outstanding contribution to public management.

Nicole joined the University of Melbourne in 2024, after 12 years at the University of Queensland. Prior to this she held faculty and research positions at Melbourne Business School, Warwick Business School (UK), The Australian & New Zealand School of Government, and Swinburne University of Technology.