Dr Harry Pitts

I am an academic writing, researching and teaching about the politics of fairer work futures, with a particular focus on how changes in working life relate to wider technological, (geo)political and economic transformations.

I am a Senior Lecturer in Politics and Director of Business Engagement & Innovation for the Department of Humanities & Social Sciences at University of Exeter’s Cornwall Campus, located in my hometown of Penryn. I am also an Honorary Senior Research Fellow at University of Bristol Business School, a Co-Investigator of the Economic & Social Research Council Centre for Sociodigital Futures, a Fellow of the Institute for the Future of Work, and Secretary of the British Universities Industrial Relations Association.

I currently co-lead a project on socioeconomic foundations for good work and good growth in Cornwall as part of Shared Prosperity Fund programmes delivered by Exeter Innovation. I recently led a Foundation for European Progressive Studies/Progressive Britain programme on work, security and social democracy, culminating in two reports, A Progressive Politics of Work for the Age of Unpeace: What Labour Can Learn from the European Centre-Left, and Cybersecuronomics: Cybersecurity & Labour’s Modern Industrial Strategy.

I am currently co-editing the Routledge Handbook for the Future of Work, and am the author or coauthor of five previous books: Marx in Management and Organisation Studies: Rethinking Value, Labour and Class Struggles (Routledge 2022); A World Beyond Work? Labour, Money and the Capitalist State Between Crisis and Utopia (Emerald, 2021); Value (Polity, 2020); Corbynism: A Critical Approach (Emerald, 2018) and Critiquing Capitalism Today: New Ways to Read Marx (Palgrave, 2017).

My commentary on policymaking, political economy and the politics of work has been widely featured and covered in media outlets including the Guardian, the Times, the Economist and the Financial Times. I have collaborated with organisations across the private, public and third sectors, including multinational corporations, local authorities, trades unions, government agencies, SMEs, social enterprises, think-tanks, pressure groups and policymakers.

You can find out more about me and my story in this recent profile published to celebrate 20 years of the University of Exeter’s campus in Penryn, Cornwall, and more about my work and publications at my personal website here.