I joined the University of Sheffield as a Lecturer in Employment Relations in 2018 after completing my doctorate in Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. I am currently a Senior Lecturer in Employment Relations and member of the Centre for Decent Work (CDW). As of September 2025, I am serving as Chair of the American Sociological Association’s Section on Labor and Labor Movements, as well as co-organiser of the International Labour and Logistics Research Network.
My research and teaching interests include industrial relations, globalization, political sociology, political economy and social theory. I am currently writing a monograph based on a global organizational ethnography conducted between 2013-2019 examining dockworker trade union coordination in response to recent labor disputes in Europe (Greece, Sweden) and Latin America (Chile, Colombia). The project draws on the work of Nicos Poulantzas to develop a non-orthodox theory of worker power able to account for its simultaneous grounding in economy, state and ideology.
In 2022-2023, I led a research project with colleagues at the Centre for Decent Work to analyse long-term workforce and management trends across UK public services. The project was funded by UNISON, the largest public services union in the UK, and sought to support the union to develop a national Organising and Recruitment Strategy in order to deploy resources effectively to grow power and influence for members both in sectors and workplaces where the union is recognised and in strategically expanding areas such as early years and social care.
Articles based on my research have been published in the British Journal of Industrial Relations, Latin American Politics and Society, Work, Employment and Society, Global Labour Journal, Labor History, Critical Sociology and New Labor Forum. These papers have been awarded the Labor and Employment Relations Association James. G. Scoville Best International/Comparative Industrial Relations Paper Award (2018) and the American Sociological Association Section on Labor and Labor Movements’ Distinguished Scholarly Article Award (2018).
Katy Fox-Hodess 