Rate My Professor David Lain

Professor David Lain is Professor of Work and Ageing at Newcastle University Business School, affiliated with the Leadership, Work and Organisation subject group. He serves as Subject Group Head for Leadership, Work and Organisation and co-leads the Work, Employment and HRM Research Community (WEHRM) with Professor Susan Kirk. This interdisciplinary community emphasizes sociological and critical perspectives on work and employment studies, employee relations, human resource management, careers, and learning. Lain's research centers on the organisation, management, and experience of work in later life, particularly older workers' employment participation, retirement transitions, precarity, and extended working lives. His investigations explore how job quality, household dynamics, welfare policies, and neoliberal contexts shape insecurities and risks for older workers across the UK, USA, and Europe.

Lain has produced influential publications advancing knowledge in ageing and employment. Key works include his monograph Reconstructing Retirement: Work and Welfare in the UK and USA (Policy Press, 2018), which examines evolving retirement amid welfare reforms, and the edited volume Older Workers in Transition: European Experiences in a Neoliberal Era (Bristol University Press, 2022). Prominent articles feature Understanding older worker precarity: the intersecting domains of jobs, households and the welfare state (Ageing & Society, 2019, 135 citations), Precarity and ageing: Understanding insecurity and risk in later life (2020, 104 citations), and Extended Work Lives and the Rediscovery of the 'Disadvantaged' Older Worker (2019). Recent contributions address employer responses to older workforce health needs (2024), future health and care workforce pipelines (2025), and job redeployment for older local government workers (2022). As Series Editor for Bristol University Press's Rethinking Work, Ageing and Retirement series, Lain shapes scholarly discourse. His research informs policy through partnerships with ESRC, OECD, European Commission, CIPD, HM Treasury, and regional authorities, influencing debates on healthy ageing, workforce sustainability, and inequality reduction.