Research interests include: work organisation in the public services; assistant and support roles in health, education and social  care; emotional labour amongst care workers; public sector trade unions, pay and grading systems.

Research interests include: work organisation in the public services; assistant and support roles in health, education and social  care; emotional labour amongst care workers; public sector trade unions, pay and grading systems.

After spending over twenty years at the University of Oxford, Ian Kessler joined King’s College, London in September 2012. He has been involved in a number of research projects on aspects of employment relations in the British public services. This work has ranged across central government, the health service, and local government, including education and social care, and covered such topics as pay determination, strategic human resource management and work organisation. Over the last few years he has been exploring nurse support roles in acute health care, and the more general re-structuring of the nursing workforce. He has co-authored two books on aspects of public service employment relations:  The Modernisation of the Public Services and Employee Relations (2012) (with S. Bach.) and the Modernisation of the Nursing Workforce: Valuing the Healthcare Assistant (2012) (with Paul Heron). He was a commissioner on the Local Government Pay Commission in 2005 and has acted as adviser to the Royal College of Nursing, the Police Federation, the Audit Commission and the National Audit Office.