Kathleen Riach

Professor Kathleen Riach is a Professor of Organisation Studies at the University of Glasgow's Adam Smith Business School. She serves as a UK Delegate for the G20 engagement group (W20), an Academic Fellow of the CIPD, and a visiting professor at the Monash Centre for Health Research and Implementation in Australia. Professor Riach is a member of the School's Human Resource Management and Organisational Behaviour research cluster and has established herself as a world leader in workplace inequality research.

Professor Riach's research focuses on the lived, bodily experience of inequality and work across the life course, with particular emphasis on occupational health and wellbeing, aging as economic and cultural phenomena, and how women and underrepresented groups navigate different forms of inequality across their careers. Her pioneering research on menopause at work is globally recognized, having launched MIPO in 2019 - one of the world's first online free resources to help managers support menopause in the workplace, accessed over 18,000 times in 50 countries. She has worked with various public, private, and national governments to introduce menopause policies, including leading research that resulted in national employee guidelines for NHS Scotland. In 2024, she became chair for the forthcoming ISO Standard on Menopause, Menstruation and Menstrual Health in the Workplace.

Her research portfolio spans organizational discrimination, diversity and inclusion, with special focus on aging, gender, and illness at work. She also explores professional identity and emotions in the workplace, employing qualitative methods informed by sociomateriality and feminist theory. Professor Riach's work regularly features in media outlets across Australia, the UK, and Europe, including ABC National, The Conversation, and the BBC.

Professor Riach's extensive publication record demonstrates her leadership in workplace health and gender equality research. Her recent work analyzes depression as a public feeling in Peru, organizational injustice among female police officers, menopause in workplace contexts, and the intersection of gender, work, and philosophy through Judith Butler's lens. Her research consistently bridges academic theory with practical workplace applications, particularly in health contexts and diversity initiatives.

• AACSB's Influential Leader of the year (2024)
• Herald Higher Education Awards winner (2025)
• Imaginative Educator award by the Scottish Institute of Enterprise

As a dedicated mentor, Professor Riach supervises doctoral students working on topics including complex mental health at work, inclusive early careers in virtual workplaces, and cultural heritage security. She serves on editorial boards for Human Relations and Organization journals, and provides expert review for major research councils including the Austrian Science Fund, ESRC, and SSHRC. Her international academic influence extends through visiting positions in Sweden, Denmark, and Germany as a Mercator Professorial Fellow, and her collaborations with government, private, and public sector organizations worldwide demonstrate the real-world impact of her research.