ProfessorLucy Taksa

Professor Lucy Taksa is a multi-disciplinary scholar whose expertise encompasses the fields of history, employment relations, management, gender, cultural and age diversity. She has collaborated with scholars from these fields and also archeology, demography, economics, geography and law. She has worked at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS), University of NSW (UNSW) and Macquarie University has been at deakin University since 2022 where she is a Research Professor and Deputy Director, Centre for Refugee Employment, Advocacy, Training & Education (CREATE) in Deakin University's Faculty of Business & Law.

 She has expertise in research management, strategy and governance in higher education and the not-for-profit (NFP) sector. Her research & publications focus on the past, present and future of work; working people; employment relations, management & management education; technological & cultural change; gendered culturally diverse workplace cultures; representations of women leaders; equity & diversity management, migrant and refugee employment and skills; workplace health & safety and heritage management. Throughout her career, Lucy has promoted collaboration between scholars and external stakeholders in support of the UN's Sustainability Development Goals. In 2019 she was selected as one of the Australian Financial Review 100 Women of Influence.

She has held leadership roles at University of New South Wales (UNSW) and Macquarie University (MQ) as follows: Head, School of Organisation & Management and Associate Dean (AD) Education at UNSW (2003-06); Head, Department of Marketing & Management and AD Research, Faculty of Business & Economics, Macquarie University (2009-14; 2015-18); Director, of the UNSW Industrial Relations Research Centre (2000-Aug. 2009) and Director, Centre for Workforce Futures, MQ (July 2018-Jan 2022).

Internationally she was an affiliate of the Chaire Diversite et Management at Paris-Dauphine University, France (2013-2019) and has been a Senior Fellow, Centre for Unframed Thinking, Rennes Business School, France since 2022. In addition, she has been a member of the Centre on Global Migration Advisory Board, University of Gothenburg, Sweden since 2017 and of the Toulouse Business School's Research Advisory Board since 2025.

Outside academia, she was a non-judicial member of the NSW Administrative Decisions Tribunal Equity Division (1996-2007) & Legal Services Division (2003-07); Chair, NSW State Records and Archives Board (2007-12) and Non-Executive Board Member of Settlement Services International Ltd (2015-2021) and of Access Community Enterprise Ltd QLD, Access Community Services Ltd QLD, Brisbane Multicultural Arts Centre Ltd QLD, Multicultural Centre for Mental Health and Wellbeing Ltd QLD (2018-2021).

She has been was Trustee of CEDA (Committee on Economic Development for Australia) & CEDA Leadership in Diversity and Inclusion Series, while at Macquarie University (2018-19), Mentor for the CEDA Copeland Professional Development Leadership Development Program (2018-2021) and Member CEDA Migration Member Advisory Committee (2022-2024). In addition, she has been a Senior Fellow with Outside Opinion Higher Education consultants since 2022. In 2024 she was appointed to the Board of the Multicultural Communities Council NSW.

She was a Member of the Australian Research Council (ARC) College of Experts (2014-16), and has been an assessor for the following ARC funding schemes since 1998: Large grants program; Strategic Partnerships with Industry Research & Training (SPIRT); Discovery; Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA); Linkage; Future Fellowship, Laureate Fellowship; National Intelligence and Security Discovery Research; Special Research Initiative for Australian Society, History and Culture Research. 

In addition, she has been an invited assessor of grant applications internationally including: The ‘Hertha Firnberg–Program’, Austrian Science Fund (2011); the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Insight Program (2012 and 2019); the SONATA BIS Research Funding Scheme, National Science Centre, Poland (2014); The Netherlands Organisation for Health Research and Development (ZonMw), The Hague, The Netherlands (2017); the KU Leuven Research Council (Leuven University, Belgium) Grant scheme (2021); Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research NWO Talent Programme Veni scheme (2021) and The French Institutes for Advanced (FIA) Study Fellowship Programme (coordinated by the RFIEA (Network of French Institutes for Advanced Study), a foundation for scientific cooperation created by the French Ministry of Research (2023)

Professor Taksa has been on various journal Editorial Boards since the early 1990s and is now Journal of Industrial Relations Co-Editor-in-Chief (with Professor A. Pyman).

She has received 7 ARC grants for projects relating to work, transport, multicultural Australia, migrant ageing, heritage and history and industrial transformation. She is currently a team member on an international EU HORIZON funded project, based at Rennes Business School focusing on the role of the social economy in addressing social exclusion and providing quality jobs relating to ageing support in regional areas in Bulgaria, Italy and Spain. She has partnered with external organisations on 15 projects, including AHRI, NSW Department of Planning, NSW Ministry of Health, the Australian Meat & Livestock Association, SkillsIQ, Transport Workers Union and the Rail Tram and Bus Unions and others.

She has supervised 18 higher degree students to completion. Her teaching at UNSW included courses on Industrial Relations and Human Resource Management, Organisational Studies and Diversity Management.