In this episode of the Understanding Society podcast, we explore the effect of our jobs and job security on our health and wellbeing. Our host Emma Houlton introduces two interviews. The first, with Professor Tarani Chandola (University of Manchester), focuses on the relationship between working hours and work-life balance and our health. The second conversation is with Dr Claire Niedzwiedz (University of Glasgow), who is studying the relationship between financial security and physical health. 

Topics covered in this episode:

• Who the researchers are, and what their studies have found
• Are flexible working conditions really better for employees?
• How does the blurring of boundaries between work and home life affect people?
• The use of biomarkers from Understanding Society
• Tarani Chandola talks about the challenges of collecting stress markers, and the correlates used in his study
• Both researchers talk about the surprises they found during their studies, and how our assumptions about our work life measure up to their findings
• Is the rise of working from home and freelancing a good thing?
• How children play into work-related stress
• The policy and research implications of these papers
• Claire Niedzwiedz takes us through the effect of secure employment, unemployment, and the threat of unemployment, on physical health
• How biomarkers change over time in response to these changes in job security

Guest contributors

Professor Tarani Chandola 

Tarani Chandola is a Professor of Medical Sociology at the University of Manchester. His research is primarily on the social determinants of health, focusing on health inequalities and psychosocial factors, and the analysis of longitudinal cohort studies. Much of his research is on the social determinants of health with a focus on stress at work, and its psychophysiological effects on health. He is a research leader on the topic of work and health, with two of his papers in the top 10 most cited studies on the topic of work stress. His h-index of 53 (Google Scholar, October 2018) and 44 (Scopus, October 2018) was achieved within 20 years of his DPhil from over 120 peer reviewed papers in peer reviewed journals. His research expertise spans different disciplines- population and public health, epidemiology, social statistics and sociology- and different methodological approaches. He has had leadership and advisory roles within international research organisations, government departments and academic bodies.

Tarani was the head of the Department of Social Statistics (2012-2014) at the University of Manchester and the director of the Cathie Marsh Institute for Social Research (2014-2016). He is currently a co-director of two Economic and Social Research Council funded centres: the National Centre for Research Methods (NCRM: www.ncrm.ac.uk) and the International Centre for Lifecourse Studies in Society and Health (ICLS: www.ucl.ac.uk/icls). He also co-directs the SOC-B: the Social-Biological Centre for Biosocial Research, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council and the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council. He is a fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences and is a member of the Economic and Social Research Council's Strategic Advisory Network.

Dr Claire Niedzwiedz

Claire Niedzwiedz's research focuses on understanding the social and political determinants of population health and health inequalities. She joined the Department of Sociology in July 2016 as a Postdoctoral Researcher in Quantitative Sociology, working with Professor David Stuckler. Claire is particularly interested in exploiting natural experiments which involve changes in the political environment and their impact on health and health inequalities.

Claire completed her PhD in Public Health at the University of Glasgow, which examined the relationship between welfare regimes and socioeconomic inequalities in wellbeing among older people across Europe. After completing her PhD she undertook postdoctoral research at the Centre for Research on Environment, Society and Health (CRESH) based at the University of Edinburgh. This research included studies examining inequalities in mental health, wellbeing and loneliness across Europe and ways in which these might be reduced. Claire also has a background in Physiology and previously worked for the NHS as a health analyst.

About Understanding Society 

Understanding Society is the largest longitudinal study of its kind - around 40,000 households have contributed to the Study, and their data leads to research which informs policy, shaping the future of the UK.

For more information, visit our website

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.