Book launch event: Handbook on Precarious Work

Speaker

Dr Maria Hudson is a Senior Lecturer in Human Resource Management at Essex Business School. Her teaching and research activities explore and address labour market disadvantage and structural inequalities.  She has undertaken related research funded by a variety of organisations, including the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service (Acas), the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF), the Trades Union Congress, the Equality and Human Rights Commission and the Department for Work and Pensions. Maria was most recently Principal Investigator for a JRF commissioned evidence review on Ethnicity, poverty, and in-work inequalities in the UK with a particular focus on job quality, barriers to better paid work and the role of visa status, published in February 2026.

Dr Beatrice Piccoli is a Lecturer in Human Resource Management and Organizational Behaviour at Essex Business School whose research examines job insecurity and precarious work, with a particular focus on their individual, organisational, and societal consequences across countries. Her research is based on advanced quantitative methods and multi-level, cross-national analyses to inform evidence-based policy and practice. Beatrice has published numerous peer-reviewed articles in leading academic journals such as Work & Stress, Journal of Experimental Psychology, Economic and Industrial Democracy and Journal of Business Research.