Human rights, gender, wellbeing, degrowth and the four day week with Dr Orla Kelly, School of Social Policy, Social Work and Social Justice.
Q: How did you end up doing what you’re doing now? Tell us about your academic background
A: Like many of us, I took a bit of a winding professional path. I actually started out studying Commerce and German at UCC. My parents hadn’t gone to college, and career guidance was more limited then than it is now, so my decision about what to study was less considered than it might have been! I liked economics and languages and was dying to get out of North Tipperary and see the world. So, I thought a business degree with an Erasmus year would give me a lot of options – so that is what I did. After that, I did a master’s in international business at Smurfit. My thesis focused on barriers to female advancement in male-dominated sectors. I was always interested in equity and social justice.
From there, I was lucky enough to join Google’s European headquarters in Dublin. They were recruiting quite actively then, and I began working in campaign development. It was a wonderful experience, and I made lifelong friends, but ultimately, I could not settle there; I just felt like I wanted to do something more impactful. The financial crisis had just hit, so it was a hard decision, but I decided to quit. I returned to education to complete a master’s in international human rights law at the Irish Centre for Human Rights at NUI Galway.
The program helped me secure a research assistantship at Human Rights Law Network in New Delhi. So, I moved and worked on human rights projects related to gender and disability rights, among other things. It was a transformative experience. After that, I was hoping to work in international development. I applied for loads of jobs in New York and, on a whim, a short-term research assistantship job at Harvard in the School of Public Health in Boston. I got that position, was hired full-time as a research associate, and spent the next five years working on gender-related projects in South Asia. In 2015, I began my PhD in Boston College and specialised in environmental sociology. I joined UCD in September 2020.
Q: In terms of methodology, it seems like you started out quite quantitative and now you do a bit more of a mix?
A: Yes, I do a mix. The paper I’m writing right now is quantitative. I’m looking at how the four-day week affects time use for men and women. How does it affect wellbeing outcomes in terms of stress, work life balance and is it different for men and women? However, I began doing human rights investigations, which involved a lot of interviewing and working with stakeholders. So, I enjoy doing that, too. It really depends on the research question and the data available to me.
” Moreover, I saw the human cost of being on the front lines of climate change and what this meant for the social outcomes I had been researching […] You could see the animals dying; everybody looked distressed and talked about how they couldn’t pay the bribe for the guy with the water tanker to come around. I realised I can’t do work focused on human rights and wellbeing without looking at things from a climate change perspective.”
Q: Tell us a bit about your time at Harvard and at Boston College
A: As I mentioned, I began working on a short-term temporary contract at Harvard School of Public Health. I found a wonderful mentor, Prof Jacqueline Bhabha, and she hired me full-time as a research associate, managing research projects for her. I spent a few months a year in different parts of India at various research sites with our collaborators. One of the projects I was involved in was near the border with Pakistan. I worked a lot with amazing women’s rights organisations, which was inspiring and humbling. Two things piqued my interest. One NGO, SEWA, had an innovative project where women who were economically disadvantaged were making mobile solar panels women’s and were involved in other renewable energy project at a time when these kinds of projects were only starting to become popular. The business was innovative in that the work was less arduous than some other forms of employment, it was a growing industry, and there were environmental benefits.
Moreover, I saw the human cost of being on the front lines of climate change and what this meant for the social outcomes I had been researching. One particular incident stuck with me; I was evaluating an education program that had been set up to help girls continue with their secondary schooling from home when it was no longer possible for them to attend in person. On one trip, there was a drought in the village I worked in. I remember going around with my survey asking our collaborators about educational outcomes, e.g., are you studying for your maths exam? It just felt so ridiculous.
You could see the animals dying; everybody looked distressed and talked about how they couldn’t pay the bribe for the guy with the water tanker to come around. I realised I can’t do work focused on human rights and wellbeing without looking at things from a climate change perspective. And the best way to do that, at least that I could see at the time, was to set my own research agenda. So, I decided to do some further training in research.
One of the perks of being a Harvard employee was that I could enrol in any course I wanted at a subsidised rate. So, with the support of my boss, I began taking graduate courses in research design, statistics and data analysis. Once I had accumulated a couple of semesters’ worth of credits, I looked around and found PhD programs and a supervisor that might align with my research agenda.
I found Andrew Jorgenson at Boston College, who is a leader in the sub-discipline of environmental sociology. I was accepted into the program and began my PhD at Boston College in 2015. I got excellent methods training at BC and a firm disciplinary grounding in environmental sociology. We also had a lovely working group of students and faculty focused on environmental sociology, and many of them are now my collaborators. Having a supportive supervisor and PhD cohort was key because I had two sons while completing my studies – which I don’t think I could have managed without that support.
“in the last ten to fifteen years, climate and environmental issues have become central to all related disciplines. Increasingly, too, there is an appreciation that social factors drive the environmental crisis, and therefore, social science, including sociology, must be central to the design and implementation of our responses.”
Q: Tell us a bit about the field of environmental sociology that you found in the US. Does it have a strong social justice aspect, for instance?
A: When I began in BC, environmental sociology was growing as a subfield. It started in the seventies in the US and a little later in Europe, particularly the Netherlands, and has expanded significantly in the last decade. It’s not just sociology, though; in the last ten to fifteen years, climate and environmental issues have become central to all related disciplines. Increasingly, too, there is an appreciation that social factors drive the environmental crisis, and therefore, social science, including sociology, must be central to the design and implementation of our responses, which too often have been understood in narrow technical terms.
In terms of social justice, it depends on who’s doing it and what questions you are exploring. Some researchers are more critical than others and explore more justice-oriented questions. From my perspective, sociology, or at least the best of it, is inherently justice-orientated. For example, much of mainstream sociological theory is critical of the status quo. Much of critical race theory comes from sociology. Foundational theorists like Marx and C. Wright Mills, and their work stemming from that fundamental critique of capitalism, power structures, and elites. For me, these perspectives are most helpful in understanding the structural drivers of climate change and the other overlapping crises we face in the 21st century.
“There is a growing appreciation of how damaging the bifurcation of human well-being and environmental outcomes has been, both in terms of research and, more broadly, in terms of our cultural orientation. We need to appreciate that there is no economy without an ecosystem, there are no human societies with the earth to support us. It is not about saving the planet; we are trying to save ourselves.”
Q: Do you think there’s an increasing focus on linking sustainability and wellbeing within research and policy? And why do you think this is?
A: Yes, I think there is. Partly, there is a growing appreciation of how damaging the bifurcation of human well-being and environmental outcomes has been, both in terms of research and, more broadly, in terms of our cultural orientation. We need to appreciate that there is no economy without an ecosystem, there are no human societies with the earth to support us. It is not about saving the planet; we are trying to save ourselves. So, the need for a unified social and ecological framework has never been more pressing.
It’s also coming from policymakers. Unfortunately, because of power structures and path dependencies, much of public policy has been primarily designed to pursue the goal of economic growth. However, we know that economic growth is correlated with wellbeing only to the extent that spoils of growth are redistributed. Plus, the untenability of extractivist economies has never been more apparent. Public opinion polls now show that governments have a mandate for change. So, policymakers are looking for policies that have a “double dividend”, namely, they promote human wellbeing while aligning with planetary limits, which is how I became involved in working on work time reduction (WTR).
Q: This work has brought you into the four-day week movement. Tell us a bit about how you got involved, what it’s about, and what’s happening in the Irish context.
A: I am a coinvestigator on the 4 Day Week global trials. These trials are coordinated by the nonprofit 4 Day Week Global. The CEO of the nonprofit at the time Joe O’Connor was based in Ireland and because of that Ireland was part of the first wave of the trials. I was approached to be part of the international research team that was being formed at the time and lead the implementation of the research arm of the Irish trial. The research trials involved tracking the economic social and environmental impacts of work time reduction based on data from organisations that have decided to implement a reduced worktime policy – usually a 4-day week in their organisation. The companies self-select in but can only participate if they are not reducing employee pay and commit to a meaningful reduction in work time. Thirteen Irish and four US organisations were part of that first wave
We now have data from 150 organisations and 3000 employees worldwide, has shown large gains in wellbeing. Organisations also benefit in terms of worker retention, productivity, and other things. The environmental impacts have been less easy to track empirically, but the team are working on that. We have seen reductions in commute time and energy saving for some organisations, which is promising. I think there is also potential for a less large indirect environmental impact.
At an individual level, if we are to move towards a circular economy and a well-being economy, people need time to learn to fix things, cook their food, and reconnect with nature. At a broader level, opinion polls show that more than half are willing to volunteer time to an organisation working on climate change or engage in political actions to limit climate change. Still, people need time to do these things. And giving people the option to pursue these things by reducing the working week is where one of the key potential benefits of WTR lies.
Overall, in terms of outcomes, there are productivity outcomes, well-being outcomes, and environmental outcomes. The magnitude of gains in the health-well-being outcomes has been resounding. Juliet Schor, who leads the project, has been looking at the relationship between work and unsustainable production and consumption for decades, so that is also a key focus.D
Q: Did you look at any other aspects?
A: I, and Wen Fan and other collaborators, are interested in the gender side of things. Is it good for all? Does everybody benefit? Do they benefit in the same ways? WTR reduction holds promise for the redistribution of paid and unpaid work. For example, 70% of part-time workers in Ireland are women, mostly because of care responsibilities. That has implications for career trajectories.
Further, if you’re the one at home doing the household work because you’re working part-time, then that kind of gender inequalities in the private sphere get further entrenched. So, we are interested in finding out and if those responsibilities are shared more evenly if everyone works less. Our analysis is ongoing, but we are finding some interesting patterns regarding time use and the redistribution of household work. Everyone, regardless of gender or parental status, is getting more leisure time, which is promising.
Q: So it’s not about doing a five-day week in four days?
A: No, that’s the compressed work week. At least the organisations who participated in this trial had to commit to a meaningful reduction in work time. Most implemented a 4-day week, but other permutations also exist.
“In the 70s, many labour scholars were looking into the potential impacts of technological automation; they forecast that people soon be working far less. Economist John Maynard Keynes forecast that his grandkids would only be working fifteen hours a week back in 1930. While technology has led to efficiency gains – output per worker per hour has grown exponentially – these gains have not been redistributed to workers in terms of time.”
Q: Is there an appetite for the four-day week in Ireland?
A: The movement will continue to grow, particularly now with the proliferation of AI assisted technologies in work. In the 70s, many labour scholars were looking into the potential impacts of technological automation; they forecast that people soon be working far less. Economist John Maynard Keynes forecast that his grandkids would only be working fifteen hours a week back in 1930. While technology has led to efficiency gains – output per worker per hour has grown exponentially – these gains have not been redistributed to workers in terms of time.
After the disruption of COVID-19, people began valuing time more. Further, it was clear that the taken for granted norms about how and where work could be done could be questioned. Now even hardened billionaire business leaders like the CEO of Expedia predict that a 4 day week is on the horizon. The organisations involved in the 4 Day Week Global trials all self-selected, and the vast majority of the companies have kept the arrangement. We’ve done twelve-month and two-year follow-ups, and for the ones that replied, about 80% kept it on when we spoke to them. There is also political interest. Bernie Sanders brought a bill into the US Senate. In Ireland, I have given many briefings to key policymakers. For the benefits of WTR to be evenly enjoyed, a government-led statutory reduction in work time is the best option.
Q: Tell us about the project you had on climate change education funded by the Worldwide Universities Network
A: That was an interesting project. Per the process, I put out a one-page call to others in the WUN network to collaborate on exploring the relationship between education and environmental outcomes. I had thought that I would do something along the lines of what I did for my PhD, some kind of macro comparison of countries, maybe spending on education and carbon emissions, or that kind of thing. High-level stuff.
Several academics from across the network responded but they were all from diverse disciplinary and institutional backgrounds; a climate scientist, turned poet and science communicator, Julia Steinberger, who’s one of the lead drafters of the IPCC, trained demographers, a social worker who trained people in how to deal with climate anxiety in Australia. A real mix. it was daunting. Honestly, I was thinking, oh my God, where do I start?
But actually, it was amazing. It was during Covid, so the support group for each other. We talked a lot about how to engage with students about the reality of the environmental crises without leaving them depressed, and how we deal with those feelings of overwhelm ourselves. We produced a podcast about these issues and wrote a couple of reports and journal articles. I learned so much from the others in the network, including how we need to make space to support students, and ourselves to deal with these realities.
As a follow-up project, colleagues at the education school at I surveyed UCD students to get a sense of their feelings about climate change and how they could be better supported to take climate action. The survey was rolled out again just this year by final year students in the BSc in Sustainability students who are using the findings to create a Toolkit to support their peers. It’s a terrific student-led initiative supported by SATLE fusing and faculty and staff across the University.
“We can’t just rely on techno-optimism alone, it’s just impossible. We need a wholesale change in terms of what we want from the economy, do we serve it or does it serve us? What are those sectors that are socially meaningful and what needs to be scaled back. Degrowth can be a helpful way of thinking about that, because it immediately problematises the extent to which we’ve naturalised a growing economy as something that must continue.”
Q: You work aligns a lot with the degrowth movement – why you think it’s important?
A: It’s great to work with students in terms of climate change anxiety or their knowledge, but we need structural level change. Part of that is to put pressure on the government to do things more quickly and prioritise non-human and human wellbeing over the economy. We’re seeing that crop up in all kinds of disciplines, and one from Ecological Economics that’s gaining traction in Europe is this concept of Degrowth.
It can be somewhat polarising. But we’re nowhere near to decoupling economic growth from the material use that we need at a global scale. We’re going to need technological advancement. But we can’t just rely on techno-optimism alone, it’s just impossible. We need a wholesale change in terms of what we want from the economy, do we serve it or does it serve us? What are those sectors that are socially meaningful and what needs to be scaled back. Degrowth can be a helpful way of thinking about that, because it immediately problematises the extent to which we’ve naturalised a growing economy as something that must continue. The term resonates with many. I presented at Ireland’s first degrowth conference in June. It was hosted by Trinity and attended by academics, politicians and practitioners. Degrowth, or whatever you want to call it, is about a fundamental shift in what is prioritised in policy.
Q: What has been your experience of translating research into policy?
A: Policy change is driven by lots of people, working on a problem from all angles, from research to policy translation, public mobilisation, and implementation. As academics, I think we can contribute to that process in lots of ways, through research outputs, policy briefs, advisory roles, education-many of our students go on to really important roles. I teach on the master’s in Public Policy, and we often get students from government departments, which is great.
Traditionally, academia has really emphasised scholarly outputs, which are important for informing policy change but only one small part of the cycle. Working with partners and engaging with policy makers and the media can be really rewarding and important work. Funders and universities are encouraging it more and more, which is great. But it’s time-consuming, and you can only do so much. Making a small contribution in whatever way fits our abilities and interests and time constraints is the best-case scenario. But I certainly feel privileged to have the opportunity to work with practitioners and policymakers; I always learn so much, and it’s great to build relationships along the way.
As one of the Earth Institute’s inaugural Climate Fellows, I think the things I mention above are what makes this fellowship program so wonderful. Through it, we are supported to ensure that the work that we do is impactful. We will be supported to produce different kinds of outputs that will be accessible to a broad cohort of people, and we get to learn from our peers and support each other. So, I am very excited to be amongst the first cohort.
