Academy Fellow

Chris F Wright is Professor of Work and Labour Market Policy at the University of Sydney Business School. His research examines the institutional drivers of and barriers to the attainment of decent work. His expertise relates to the regulation of work, employment relationships and labour migration particularly in low-wage sectors. He specialises in comparative, qualitative and mixed-method research designs and methodologies. He uses his research expertise to analyse and inform public knowledge and debate and support the development of evidence-based public policy relating to work, labour markets and collective bargaining. His research has impacted industrial relations and migration policy reform in Australia and internationally.

Chris has provided requested research advice on industrial relations and migration policy to government, industry and community organisations in Australia, Canada, the UK and Chile and international agencies including the International Labour Organization, the International Organization of Migration and the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean. He has published over 100 journal articles and scholarly book chapters, co-authored Work and Industrial Relations Policy in Australia (Bristol University Press, 2025), and edited / co-edited 11 journal special issues and book volumes, including Protecting the Future of Work: New Institutional Arrangements for Safeguarding Labour Standards (Emerald, 2023) and International and Comparative Employment Relations: Global Crises and Institutional Responses (SAGE, 2021). He is an Associate Editor of Industrial Relations: A Journal of Economy and Society, a past President of the Association of Industrial Relations Academics of Australia and New Zealand (AIRAANZ), a member of the Australian Government's Ministerial Advisory Council on Skilled Migration Expert Subcommittee, a member of the Australian Research Council College of Experts and a Board Member of the Centre for Future Work.

Chris previously worked at the University of Cambridge, Goldsmiths, University of London and Macquarie University. He has been a Distinguished Visiting Fellow at King's College London and held visiting positions at University College Dublin, the University of Copenhagen, Scuola Normale Superiore and the Australian National University.

Chris has received several major grants and fellowships including from the Australian Research Council for research on employer strategies for developing a skilled workforce, the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council for a comparative project on temporary migration and the UK Economic and Social Research Council for research on innovations in worker representation, collective bargaining and labour market regulation.

•           Australian Research Council College of Experts (since 2025)

•           Australian Government’s Ministerial Advisory Council on Skilled Migration Expert Subcommittee in 2024 (reappointed in 2025)

•           Associate Editor of the Industrial Relations: A Journal of Economy and Society, based at the University of California, Berkeley (since 2019).

·      Distinguished Visiting Fellowship, King’s Business School, King’s College London, UK, 2023

·      Nevile-Plowman Best Article Prize for ‘A guest-worker state? The declining power and agency of migrant labour in Australia’ (with Stephen Clibborn), The Economic and Labour Relations Review, 2021

·      Discovery Early Career Researcher Award, Australian Research Council, 2017-2021

·      Research Excellence Award, University of Sydney Business School, University of Sydney, 2017

·      Luis Aparicio Emerging Scholar Prize, International Labour and Employment Relations Association, Switzerland, 2015

·      University of Sydney Postdoctoral Research Fellowship Award, University of Sydney, 2014-2017

·      Dean’s Excellence Early Career Researcher Award, Faculty of Business and Economics, Macquarie University, 2013

Placement Fellowship Award, Economic and Social Research Council, UK, 2010-2011

1. McLaughlin, C. & Wright, C.F. (2026) The post-crisis legacy effects of union legitimacy in liberal market economies, Industrial Relations Journal, 57(5): 323-333

2. Wright, C.F. (2024) Multi-employer collective bargaining in liberal market economies: Reasons for survival and reinvigoration, International Labour Review, 163(4): 677-691

3. Arnholtz, J. & Wright, C.F. (2023) Labor migration as a source of institutional change: Danish and Australian construction compared, ILR Review, 76(3): 532-555

4. Wright, C.F. & Constantin, A. (2021) Why recruit temporary sponsored skilled migrants? A human capital theory analysis of employer motivations in Australia, Australian Journal of Management, 46(1): 151-173

5. Wright, C.F. & Clibborn, S. (2020) A guest-worker state? The declining power and agency of migrant labour in Australia, Economic and Labour Relations Review, 31(1): 34-58