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Headshot of Tom Vickers

Tom Vickers

Associate Professor

School of Social Sciences

Staff Group(s)
Nottingham Civic Exchange Social and Political Sciences Sociology

Role

Dr Tom Vickers is employed at NTU as an Associate Professor in Sociology, combining research with teaching and supervision at undergraduate and postgraduate levels. He is Director of the Work Futures Observatory and Co-Coordinator of the international Ecologies of Labour network.

Career overview

Prior to coming to NTU in 2015 Tom held posts at Northumbria University, most recently as Senior Lecturer alongside a faculty-wide role coordinating research impact. Before this he worked at Durham University, where he was lead Research Associate on a large ESRC-funded project. He completed his doctoral studies at Durham in 2010, funded by an ESRC 1+3 scholarship, and is a professionally qualified youth and community worker.

Research areas

Tom Vickers has wide-ranging experience in research and evaluation projects, employing qualitative and mixed methods. His work examines contemporary and future relations of work, employment and work practices, with a particular focus on ecology, precarity, and the role of borders and migration. Current and recent projects include:

Tom has received research funding from the ESRC, British Academy, Leverhulme Trust, NIHR School for Social Care Research, Hope Projects, Nottinghamshire County Council, Nottingham and Nottinghamshire Refugee Forum, GMB Union, and Trades Union Congress.

His work has been published in peer reviewed journals including Critical Social Policy, Economic and Industrial Democracy, Area, Mobilities, Time & Society, Ethnic & Racial Studies, Critical Sociology, Social Policy & Administration, the European Journal of Cultural Studies, and the British Journal of Social Work, and in non-academic publications including The Conversation, Futures of Work, LocalGov.co.uk, Discover Society, Open Democracy, the Runnymede Bulletin, and the Lincolnshire Echo.

His work has been reported on by the Financial Times, Telegraph, BBC, Indus News, All Now, Union News, East Midlands Business Link, Private Hire and Taxi Monthly, and Nottingham Post.

Tom welcomes applications for PhD supervision in any of the following areas:

  • ecologies of labour
  • work and employment
  • trade unionism
  • precarity
  • capitalism
  • Marxism
  • asylum/refugee studies
  • migration and border studies
  • state welfare
  • social work
  • imperialism
  • racism and anti-racism
  • volunteering
  • activism
  • public sociology

Tom is a UKCGE Recognised Research Supervisor. PhD topics Tom has supervised include:

  • To explore the impacts of technological transformations on industrial workers, both blue- and white-collar, in the automotive sector in Turkey
  • Examining context, causality, and outcome variations in public sector accountability reforms in selected Commonwealth member States: A realist study of Open Government Partnership (OGP)
  • Selfless service: Exploring the impact of the custom of langar and how this corresponds with the many meanings of seva in Sikhism within the context of the cost of living crisis
  • Afghan Mothers’ Narratives in the UK: A Case Study of Muslim Mothering, Identity, and Agency in Diaspora
  • Polish return migration: Ethnic nostalgia or class response for the Brexit and global neoliberal crisis?
  • Precarious Work, Social Care and the Crisis of Capital Accumulation
  • The Impacts of the 2014 and 2016 Immigration Acts on Health and Access to Health Care
  • Human Rights and the [right to the] city: human rights challenges and claims in oil-extracting cities in the Global South
  • Policing in Partnership: Are organic police partnerships more effective than mandated police partnerships?
  • Cosmopolitanism and asylum seekers in the European Union - Implementation of the asylum acquis in Germany, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom from 1999-2015. Are EU Member States fulfilling their international and EU obligations?
  • Children from refugee and asylum seeking families: can their relationships with children and families of host families enhance neighbourhood relations within dispersal areas?
  • Social capital networks and ties in a restrictive labour market: The experience of Romanian migrants in the North East of England

External activity

Tom Vickers is a founder and Co-Coordinator of the international Ecologies of Labour network. He has prior experience on the Editorial Board of the journal Sociological Research Online, as an Associate Consultant for the Learning and Work Institute, as a Fellow of the NIHR School for Social Care Research, and as an active participant in movements for social and economic justice.

Sponsors and collaborators

Recent sponsors and collaborators include:

  • GMB Union
  • TUC (Trades Union Congress)
  • British Academy
  • CIPD
  • Grange Farm
  • Hope Projects
  • United Private Hire Drivers union

Press expertise

  • Trade unionism
  • Work and employment
  • Gig work and the platform economy
  • Precarity
  • Asylum and immigration
  • Activism and social movements
  • Public Sociology
  • Marxism