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Uracha Chatrakul Na Ayudhya

Positions held:
  • Reader in Work and Organization, Birkbeck Business School
  • Student Experience Co-Lead, Birkbeck Business School
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  • Overview

    Overview

    Biography

    Uracha joined Birkbeck in 2019 as Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in the Department of Organizational Psychology. She served as the Assistant Dean for Equalities and Diversity in the School of Business, Economics, and Informatics (BEI) and on the BEI Executive from 2020 to 2023. In 2021, she was promoted to Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor). In 2024, she was promoted to Reader in Work and Organization (Associate Professor).

    Uracha is a proud migrant with Thai heritage. She was born and lived in Thailand and has also lived in Indonesia, Australia, and Malaysia. She arrived in Manchester, UK, in 1998, to pursue degrees in Psychology and Organizational Psychology. She moved to London to take up the post of Lecturer in HRM and Organizational Behaviour at Middlesex University in 2007 and became Senior Lecturer there in 2011.

    She served as Co-Editor of the journal Work, Employment and Society from 2018 to 2021.

    Uracha is an interdisciplinary equality and diversity scholar with two decades of teaching and research experience in organizational psychology (OP), organizational behaviour (OB), and human resource management (HRM). In 2022, she was recognised by HR Magazine as one of the UK’s ‘Most Influential HR Thinkers’. Her disciplinary background is in OP, and she draws heavily from adjacent disciplines to inform her research, curriculum, and critical pedagogy, including sociology of work and critical Management Studies. She is an academic member of the CIPD, a chartered psychologist (CPsychol) with the British Psychological Society, and a Fellow of the HEA.

    Her overall research programme focuses on unequal working lives, with an emphasis on the worker experience of inclusion and exclusion. She has developed a body of work around 'doing diversity research differently', focusing on the practice and methodologies of 'writing differently' and collective writing as resistance against hegemonic norms of knowledge production.

    As an equality and diversity researcher, her work heavily informs her curriculum development and critical pedagogy. As a former international student and now a migrant worker, her presence, visible differences, and identities as a Southeast Asian migrant and as a woman of colour intersect to shape her praxis in the classroom. She holds a deep commitment to promoting social justice through curriculum and pedagogy, which underpins her praxis.

    Highlights

    • Winner of the European Management Review Best Paper Award 2019:

      Chatrakul Na Ayudhya, U., Prouska, R., & Beauregard, T.A. (2019). The impact of global economic crisis and austerity on quality of working life and work-life balance: A capabilities perspective. European Management Review, 16(4), 847-862. (CABS 3, impact factor 1.6)

      Read the paper for free here: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/emre.12128


    Office hours

    I am currently operating virtual office hours. Please e-mail me for a time to meet.

    Administrative responsibilities

    • 2025-present: Student Experience Co-Lead, Birkbeck Business School
    • 2024-present: Member, Birkbeck Sanctuary Working Group
    • 2019-2023: Chair of the Board of Examiners, MSc Organizational Psychology and MSc HRM University of London International Programmes
    • 2020-2023: Assistant Dean, Equalities and Diversity (BEI)
    • 2020-2024: Programme Director, PG Cert and MSc HRM
    • 2020-2023: Chair, School of BEI Equalities and Diversity Committee
    • 2020-2023: Member, College Equality and Diversity Committee
    • 2020-2023: Member, College Workload Allocation Working Group
    • 2020-2023: Member, College Athena SWAN Self-Assessment Team
    • 2020-2023: Member, College Race Equality Charter Self-Assessment Team

    Professional memberships

    • Academic MCIPD

    • Member, British Sociological Association

    • Fellow, Higher Education Academy

    • Chartered Psychologist, British Psychological Society

    Honours and awards

    ORCID

    0000-0001-5144-3096

  • Research

    Research

    Research interests

    • Unequal working lives and careers
    • Marginalized and minoritized workers in the workplace
    • Work-life balance (WLB) and transitions over the life course
    • Assisted fertility and work
    • Qualitative methodologies

    Research overview

    My research broadly focuses on unequal working lives and careers, with a particular focus on workers' lived experience at the intersection of gender, race, and ethnicity.

    I have previously conducted research projects on:

    1. The work-life experiences and expectations of university leavers
    2. Older workers' extended working lives
    3. International students' positionality and lived experience as temporary migrants in the UK
    4. The body at work and workers' experiences of combining paid employment and assisted fertility treatment
    5. The 'agile working' agenda in UK organizations
    6. Gendered and racialized invisible work, including 'office housework'

    I have received the following research funding:

    • 2019: Co-Investigator, Society for Reproductive and Infant Psychology Research Development Workshop (£1500), "Contemporary reproduction, work, and working life: Towards an agenda for research and practice"
    • 2016: Funded participant, British Council Newton Researcher Links Scheme (£1000), "Advancing Maternity Protection in Malaysia: Meeting Social Welfare and Business Needs and Contributing to Economic Development"
    • 2011-2014: Co-Investigator, ESRC/RGC (Hong Kong) Bilateral Award (£100,000, plus HK $350,000), "Age Diversity: Applying the Capabilities Approach to Career Development across the Life Course"
    • 2011-2012: Funded participant, Early-Career Work-Family Scholars Program (US$1,000), Work and Family Researchers Network (WFRN), USA
    • 2010-2011: Lead Investigator, The Richard Benjamin Social and Occupational Research Trust (£10,000), "From Sense of ‘Entitlement’ to 'Disenchantment'? A Confrontation of Expectations of International Students and Policy Makers"
    • 2009: Visiting Scholar Grant, The European Science Foundation TransEurope (€900)
    • 2003-2006: Manchester Metropolitan University PhD Studentship

    Research clusters and groups

  • Supervision and teaching

    Supervision and teaching

    Supervision

    Supervisions within Birkbeck:
    5

    I am not able to take on new doctoral students in 2026-27.

    I have co-supervised and worked with the following doctoral students to completion:

    1. Dr. Noshaba Batool - Thesis title: "Going the extra mile: what does it mean for the male and female university teachers of Pakistan?" (awarded 2014, Middlesex University)
    2. Dr. Anna Borg - Thesis title: "A CIAR study in a male-dominated ICT company in Malta which looks at work-life issues through the masculine lens: A case of: if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it?" (awarded 2015, Middlesex University)
    3. Dr. Nicola Bentham - Thesis title: "'Just because we do good, it doesn’t mean we’re not doing harm' A Critical Discourse Analysis of intersectional identities and the ideal worker concept within the professionalized UK non-profit sector" (awarded 2025, Birkbeck, University of London)

    I am currently co-supervising the following doctoral students (in alphabetical order):

    1. Shakyra Campbell - Topic: "The liminal crossing: neurodivergent workers’ lived experience of navigating the workplace"
    2. Jessica Hobbs - Topic: "Exploring the mental wellbeing experiences of working fathers who took extended parental leave"
    3. Victoria Maxfield - Topic: "Exploring Socioeconomic Barriers in Occupational Psychology Careers within the Civil Service"
    4. Margaret Ochieng - Topic: "Reasserting the Right to Breathe Through a Brick Wall: Progress, Counter-progress and Hope in Post-Floydian Antiracism Across UK Organisations Between 2020-2025"
    5. Maria Petnga-Wallace: Topic: "‘Are we shifting power?' An autoethnographic review of the implementation of anti-racism values into a new behavioural framework within a global NGO"
    6. Meredith Scott Jones - Topic: "Exploring the impact of diversity discourses on the knowledge production of employees"
    7. Jane Setten - Topic: "The changing role of public sector accountants in the UK"

    Current doctoral researchers

    • MERRY SCOTT JONES
      Nature of supervision:
      JOINT PRINCIPAL SUPERVISOR,
      Title of thesis:
      Exploring the impact of diversity discourses on the knowledge production of employees
      Description:
      Place holder
    • SHAKYRA CAMPBELL
      Nature of supervision:
      JOINT PRINCIPAL SUPERVISOR,
      Title of thesis:
      The Liminal Crossing: Neurodivergent workers’ lived experience of navigating the workplace
      Description:
      Place holder
    • MARGARET OCHIENG
      Nature of supervision:
      JOINT PRINCIPAL SUPERVISOR,
      Description:
      Place holder
    • VICTORIA MAXFIELD
      Nature of supervision:
      PRINCIPAL SUPERVISOR,
      Description:
      Place holder

    Doctoral alumni since 2013-14

    • NICOLA BENTHAM
      Nature of supervision:
      Principal Supervisor,
      Description:
      Place holder
      Awarded:
      2025

    Teaching

    I teach on undergraduate and postgraduate programmes in the People, Work, and Organizational Psychology Subject Group at Birkbeck Business School.

    I am module convenor on the following modules:

    • Selection and Assessment (MSc)
    • Organizational Behaviour (BSc, co-convene with Prof. Alexandra Beauregard)
    • Research Project (Dissertation) (MSc, co-convene with Dr. Libby Drury)

  • Publications

    Publications

    Article

    Monograph

    • McDowall, Almuth and Teoh, Kevin and Stringer, Mark and Chatrakul Na Ayudhya, Uracha and Beauregard, T. Alexandra and MacKenzie Davey, Kate and Lewis, Rachel and Yarker, Jo (2020) Organisations, race and trauma. London, UK: Department of Organizational Psychology.