Frances Flanagan

Frances’ research focuses the intersections between labour law, environmental crisis and changing formations of technology, gender and migration.

She has an interdisciplinary background in law and history and has published in academic journals including New Technology Work and Employment, the Journal of Industrial Relations and the Journal of International Labour Law and Industrial Relations, Labour History, the Economic Labour Relations Review and Thesis Eleven.

Her book, Remembering the Revolution was published by Oxford University Press and was short-listed for the Royal Historical Society Whitfield Prize for the best monograph on a subject of British or Irish history published within the United Kingdom or Republic of Ireland in 2016.

Prior to commencing her role at UTS in 2023, Frances was a Sydney Fellow in Work and Organisational Studies at the University of Sydney. She has also held academic positions as a lecturer at Birkbeck, University of London, as a Marshall Fellow at the Institute of Historical Research, and as a Senior Scholar at Hertford College Oxford. Outside academia, Frances served as National Director of Research at United Voice (now called the United Workers Union) and was a lawyer at the Yamatji Marlpa Aboriginal Corporation, the native title representative body for the Pilbara, Murchison and Gascoyne regions of Western Australia.

Frances gave the 2022 Australian Academy of the Humanities Hancock lecture on the topic ‘Horizons of national responsibility: law and the protection of life on a fossil-rich continent’. She also gave the inaugural University of Sydney Iain McCalman lecture in 2019, entitled ‘Climate Change and the New Work Order’.

Frances has written for a range of general publications on the themes of work, climate change, gender and technology including the Guardian, Inside Story, Arena Magazine, Griffith Review and the Conversation.

Frances is a member of the Labour and Migration Law Cluster, the Feminist Legal Research Group and serves on the executive committee of the Association of Industrial Relations Academics of Australia and New Zealand.