Professor Paula McDonald

Paula recently led a cross-institutional team on an ARC Discovery which examined the economic, spatial and work organisation dimensions of digital platform work and the implications of this for Australian regulatory and policy responses. The team published a major report from a national survey commissioned by the Victorian Government which revealed, for the first time, the prevalence of digital platform work in Australia. The project also revealed how platforms organise aged/disability care and design/creative work, including in partnership with German-based platform Care.com. Paula, alongside researchers in robotics engineering, was awarded an ARC Training Centre for collaborative robotics in advanced manufacturing. Published articles include: British Journal of Industrial Relations; New Media & Society; Gender, Work & Organization; Int. J of Human Resource Management; and Work, Employment & Society.

Also relevant to the impact of technology on work and workplaces, Paula's research has addressed the 'contested terrain' of social media in employment. This includes how workers and managerial agents negotiate tensions between personal and professional behaviours on social media platforms, and the magnitude of concerns about privacy, professionalism, autonomy, and regulation. Published articles include: the International Journal of Management Reviews; Human Relations; and Human Resource Management Journal.

Paula's ARC Future Fellowship adopted interdisciplinary perspectives from employment relations and youth studies to ask how young Australians conceive of their rights and responsibilities in employment and how they anticipate their future engagement in the formal economy. The research built on an earlier ARC Linkage grant which examined how school students aged 13-16 understood and negotiated their formative experiences of paid work. In this field of youth employment, Paula has also examined unpaid work and internships, including being an author of the first Australian prevalence study of unpaid work commissioned by the Commonwealth Department of Employment, and the experiences of vulnerable job-seekers via research commissioned by youth organisation SYC. Published articles include: Human Relations; Work, Employment & Society; Journal of Youth Studies; Sociology; International Journal of Management Reviews; and the Australian Journal of Labour Law.

Paula is one of Australia's foremost experts on workplace sexual harassment. Her research has been supported by an ARC Discovery grant on the causes and solutions to this costly workplace problem. Adopting socio-legal and organisational perspectives, Paula has worked with the Australian Human Rights Commission on successive national reviews and prevalence studies and related codes of practice for employers. She has also consulted to and provided expert advice and testimony to the Canadian House of Commons (Ottawa), the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (Washington DC), Legal Aid Qld (Brisbane), Qld Corrective Services (Brisbane), the United Nations (New York), and the UN World Food Program (Rome). From 2016-18, Paula was the academic member of an expert panel for the Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission's review into sexual harassment and predatory behaviour in Victoria Police. She is an invited member of the University of California Berkeley global Comparative Equality and Antidiscrimination Group. Currently, Paula is exploring the impacts of the global #MeToo movement. Published articles include: Work, Employment & Society; International Journal of Management Reviews; and International Journal of Human Resource Management.

Paula's research in the area of work-life boundaries has been supported by an ARC Linkage grant with explored policy-practice gaps in the Qld public sector and an ARC Discovery which involved replicated data collection in the Australian Defence Force, the Suncorp group, and several community organisations to examine work customisations from a social exchange perspective. The findings are relevant to diverse workplace settings, as indicated by invited presentations to end-user audiences in early childhood, defence, education, management consultancy, public sector departments, and human rights agencies. Published articles include: British Journal of Management; International Journal of Human Resource Management; Journal of Management and Organization; and Journal of Industrial Relations.

Prior to an academic career, Paula worked in clinical and research roles in the health sector, including at the Royal Brisbane and Children's Hospitals, the Men's Support and Advisory service, the Brisbane North Division of General Practice, and Queensland Medical Education Centre at the University of Queensland. She is a registered psychologist with the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency since 2003.