Rate My Professor Shaun Wilson

Professor Shaun Wilson is a Professor of Sociology at Macquarie University in the Faculty of Arts. His research investigates the distributional and ideological conflicts reshaping the politics of liberal welfare states, focusing on minimum wages and living wage campaigns, precarious work in Australia—particularly among delivery drivers on work visas and in the gig economy—housing and work precarity of international students amid COVID-19 impacts, Australia's welfare-to-work policies, union voting patterns, the political sociological foundations of the Australian electorate, global living wages movements, and attitudes towards religion and populism in higher education policy. With research activity from 2001 to 2026, he has produced 75 outputs, including 37 journal articles, 18 book chapters, three books, and edited volumes. He serves as chair of the Advisory Committee for the Australian Survey of Social Attitudes, edits the Australian Social Attitudes series with Sydney University Press, and is Chief Investigator for the Australian Co-operative Election Study for the 2025 federal elections.

Wilson has been Chief Investigator on multiple Australian Research Council Discovery Projects, including 'Survival & Wellbeing among Migrant Precariat in Australia’s Gig Economy' (2023–2026) with Raj Velayutham, Amanda Wise, Nick Harrigan, and Norbert Ebert, and 'The experience of precarious housing among international students' (2019–2021) with Alan Morris, Gaby Ramia, Emma Mitchell, and Catherine Hastings. His monograph Living Wages and the Welfare State: The Anglo-American Social Model in Transition was published by Policy Press in 2021. A book on the global living wages movement is under contract with Cambridge University Press's Contentious Politics series. Key recent publications include 'Voiceless: Division, Distrust and Discrimination at the 2023 Voice Referendum' (Australian Journal of Social Issues, 2025, with Shaun Ratcliff), 'Populist by a Distance: A Relational Framework for Unifying Ideology, Rhetoric, and Leadership Style in Populism Studies' (Journal of Political Ideologies, 2025, with Nick Turnbull and J. Atkins), 'Crowded House: Accommodation Precarity and Self-Reported Academic Performance of International Students' (Compare, 2024, with Catherine Hastings et al.), and 'Do People Sincerely Believe Conspiracy Theories that They Endorse?' (Collabra: Psychology, 2026, with Robert M. Ross et al.). He has supervised PhD and Masters students including Catherine Hastings, Vikas Arya, Charlotte Overgaard, and others who have taken academic positions internationally. Wilson holds an Honorary Professorship in the School of Communication, Society and Culture and is a Fellow of the Centre for Future Work.