Vera Weghmann

Vera joined the Public Services International Research Unit (PSIRU) at the University of Greenwich in September 2017. Her research is focused on public services, in particular privatisation, remunicipalisation, renationalisation, public sector financing and public sector reforms. While her research covers a wide range of public services across the world, she has focused on waste management and the circular economy, energy policy and the Just Transition as well as public transport. Her regional focuses have been Europe and Africa. Currently she is working on a research project analysing the lessons and opportunities of Covid19 for developing new approaches to public services.

Vera is also a member of the Centre for Research in Employment and Work (CREW) at the University of Greenwich. Her research is concerned with unemployment, unwaged and low-waged work, precarity and workers resistance. In her PhD entitled titled 'Employability and the Rise of the No-Wage Economy: resistance to unpaid work in the United Kingdom' she explored the ways in which unwaged and unrecognised workers organise. Her current research project is independent trade unionism and new ways of organising and recently (2019) won a BA/Leverhulme small grant. Vera's research follows a Participatory Action Research methodology.

Vera has been involved in independent trade unionism in the UK since 2012. She is the co-founder of the United Voices of the Word union and has been involved in the creation of the Independent Workers of Great Britain union.