Plenary Speakers
DIGIT Plenary: Professor Mark Stuart, Professor Vera Trappmann, Dr Esme Terry: Digital transformations at work: strategies and struggles – Esther Simpson Building, Lecture Theatre LG08. 24th April 2026, 11:00-12:30.
Professor Mark Stuart is the Co-Director of the Digit Research Centre, alongside Professor Jacqueline O’Reilly. He is the Montague Burton Professor of Human Resource Management and Employment Relations, at Leeds University Business School, University of Leeds. Professor Stuart has been at Leeds since 1992, studying first for a PhD and taking up a Chair in 2005. He is the Founding Director of the Centre for Employment Relations Innovation and Change, and is currently Pro Dean for Research for the Faculty of Business. Formerly, he was Editor in Chief of Work, Employment and Society (2011-15) and President of the British Universities Industrial Relations Association (2013-16). Currently, he is a sub-panel member (UoA17) for REF 2021 and was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in 2019.
Vera Trappmann is Professor in Work and Comparative Employment Relations at Leeds University. She joined Leeds University in 2015 as an Associate Professor. Prior to this she was a Junior Professor of European Studies at Magdeburg University and a Researcher at Friedrich Schiller University in Jena. She obtained her PhD at the European University Viadrina in 2009 after completing a Diplom in sociology at Bielefeld University and a Master degree in Russian and East European Studies at Stanford University. Her main research interests focus on the dynamics of organisational restructuring and its impact on working biographies, precarity and workers’ responses. This covers a broad range of areas studying platform work and mobilisation, climate change and just transition, precarity and the labour market.
Esme Terry is a Research Fellow at Leeds University. Her current Digit research explores the digital transformations of work in financial and professional services firms. More broadly, her research interests lie in the sociology of work and employment, with a particular focus on digital change, the nature and future of work in professional sectors, and diversity and (in)equalities in organisations.