Dr.Vassilopoulou is an Associate Professor in HRM and the Head of the Organisations and People Department at Brunel Business School, Brunel University London, UK. Her research focuses on equality, diversity & inclusion, gender, migration, AI & diversity, and precarious work, from a critical and international comparative perspective. She has received grants in for research and practice in the field of diversity and inclusion with a total value of over £2.5 million, such as for the OECD, the European Academy of Management (EURAM), EU Horizon2020 and EU Erasmus+. Joana is the Co-Founder of the Centre for Inclusion at Work (CEFI), in Athens, Greece.

Joana has a PhD from the University of East Anglia, UK, for which she studied the organisational habitus of managing diversity in the context of Germany. She trained as a Social Scientist (Sociology) at the University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany. She has held academic positions for nearly 20 years in Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, France, and Austria. Dr Joana Vassilopoulou has an established academic and professional record in the field of diversity and inclusion, is frequently invited to deliver talks and has organised and hosted the international Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) conference twice. Currently, Joana is an editor at Work, Employment and Society (WES) Journal. From 2015 to 2020, she served as an Associate Editor of the European Management Review (EMR) and was a board member of the European Academy of Management (EURAM) and the UK National Representative of EURAM. She has published over 50 publications such as books, chapters in edited collections and journal papers in journals such as the Human Resource Management Journal; Work, Employment and Society; European Journal of Industrial Relations; International Business Review, and the International Journal of Human Resource Management.

Joana is a certified trainer in Managing Gender and Diversity, she has developed and delivered Diversity & Inclusion training, Gender in Leadership training amongst other topics for organisations such as the European Central Bank (ECB), Eastman Chemicals, ING Bank, FedEx, in countries such as Germany, Netherlands, United Kingdom, Greece, France and the United Arab Emirates. Moreover, Joana has experience in conducting organisational gender equality audits as well as developing organisational gender equality plans. She has cooperated with several organisations, such as the European Network against Racism (ENAR) or the platform for diversity charters & CSR Europe, the European commission’s directorate-general for justice & consumers. Joana is also a Certified MBTI practitioner and as of May 2023 a certified ILM career coach and mentor.

Dr Vassilopoulou is the recipient of a visiting scholarship at Sydney University’s business school (2017); the winner of the Transnational Best Paper Award at the American Academy of Management conference (2012); and the recipient of the University of East Anglia’s Norwich Business School Diversity and Equality in Careers and Employment Research PhD scholarship (2007-2010).