Supporting academics and researchers

'What struck me was that we didn’t interact about who we were, but solely about what we had to say, about our ideas. It was a democratic ‘playing field’ of ideas, independent of anyone’s background or professional or societal standing.'

Dr Eva Selenko, Research Associate for our Working Identities project, in 2018–19

Dr Eva Selenko

Eva Selenko is a Senior Lecturer in Work Psychology at Loughborough University, where she studies the interplay between work and people’s identity. She was commissioned by Cumberland Lodge in 2018 to support our Working Identities project as a freelance Research Associate.

Eva wrote our conference briefing and participated in our March 2019 conference and the consultation that followed. She subsequently wrote our Cumberland Lodge Report on Working Identities (2019) and spoke at our live-streamed report launch.

Reflecting a year after the report launch, Eva said: ‘It was mind-bending in many ways. Meeting so many super-interesting, original, inspiring people and working on the briefing document and Cumberland Lodge Report really assured me in my academic confidence.

‘I met people from very varied backgrounds, including some from highly regarded pockets of society, who I wouldn’t normally have access to. What struck me was that we didn’t interact about who we were, but solely about what we had to say, about our ideas. It was a democratic ‘playing field’ of ideas, independent of anyone’s background or professional or societal standing.

‘I think this work will have a real impact on my own discipline of Work Psychology. I’ve presented the ideas we developed at Cumberland Lodge to other universities and developed new collaborations with various institutions. I’ve linked up with researchers from the University of Glasgow, for instance, who are working on the world of work, identity and extremism, and with researchers from Griffith University, Australia, who are interested in working identities in relation to precarity amongst young people.

‘I’ve also been invited to become a Fellow at the Royal Society for the advancement of Arts, Commerce and Manufacturing (RSA), for my research on work in crisis. I suspect that the publicity my research attracted, through Cumberland Lodge, was one reason for that invitation. I now hope to contribute to their Futures of Work programme, which is closely aligned with the ‘working identities’ theme.

‘I’m still in contact with a number of the participants on social media, and we support one another’s work. I won’t forget a particular conversation I had, with an Oxford professor who encouraged me not to shy away from ‘doing the unusual’ with my research and working across traditional academic disciplines. Since then, I’ve written two interdisciplinary papers, one of which has been submitted to Political Psychology, and I’m currently developing a third on the political consequences of work changes, which unites elements of politics, sociology and psychology.

‘The life-changes people have had to adapt to during the COVID-19 pandemic have certainly questioned their established identities. The Cumberland Lodge experience has made me think more broadly about the role that working identities play in political cohesion, and what we might do to strengthen them. This is a really pressing question for society right now, and in the next few years I see myself exploring this field of study further.’