Background
I am a Lecturer in Work, Organisation & Public Policy at University of Bristol School of Management, where I am also Business Fellow for the Faculty of Social Sciences and Law, lead the Faculty Research Group for Perspectives on Work, and direct the BSc programme in Economics & Management. I am a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and the Royal Society of Arts.
I am co-editor of Futures of Work, an online magazine published by Bristol University Press, and the author of A World Beyond Work? Labour, Money and the Capitalist State Between Crisis and Utopia (Emerald, 2021, with Ana Dinerstein), Value (Polity, 2020), Corbynism: A Critical Approach (Emerald, 2018, with Matt Bolton), and Critiquing Capitalism Today: New Ways to Read Marx (Palgrave 2017). With Jon Cruddas, I am co-editor of a Political Quarterly special issue on Postcapitalism and the Politics of Work. My work has been covered in media outlets including the Economist, the Financial Times, the Times, and the Guardian.
Research Interests
My research explores how different actors – workers, managers, politicians, activists, policymakers and intellectuals – understand, experience and organise the changing world of work and economic life. This overarching agenda breaks down into intersecting interests in the organisation and management, the politics and policy and the theory and critique of work and economic futures. My empirical work has mainly focused on the digital and creative industries as a site of study, examining how labour, time and value are measured and managed in creative agencies, as well as freelancers in settings such as co-working spaces and cooperatives.
Research articles
Cruddas, J. and Pitts, F.H. (2020), The Politics of Postcapitalism: Labour and our Digital Futures. The Political Quarterly, 91(2), 275-286
Pitts FH, Jean E, Clarke Y (2020) Sonifying the quantified self: Rhythmanalysis and performance research in and against the reduction of life-time to labour-time. Capital & Class, 44(2):219-240
Smart P, Holmes S, Lettice F, Pitts FH, Zwiegelaar J, Schwartz G, Evans S (2019) Open Science & Open Innovation in socio-political context: knowledge production for societal impact in an age of post‐truth populism. R&D Management, 49(3):279-297
Dinerstein AC, Pitts FH (2018) From post‐work to post‐capitalism? Discussing the basic income and struggles for alternative forms of social reproduction. Journal of Labor and Society, 21(4):471-491
Pitts FH (2017) Beyond the Fragment: postoperaismo, postcapitalism and Marx’s ‘Notes on machines’, 45 years on. Economy and Society, 46(3-4):324-345
Books
Bolton M, Pitts, FH (2018) Corbynism: A Critical Approach. Emerald.
Pitts FH (2017) Critiquing Capitalism Today: New Ways to Read Marx. Palgrave.
Value (Polity, November 2020)
A World Beyond Work? Labour, Money and the Capitalist State Between Crisis and Utopia (Emerald, January 2021, with Ana Dinerstein)
Working papers
Pitts, F. H., & Cruddas, J. (2020). The age of immanence: postoperaismo, postcapitalism and the forces and relations of production. University of Bristol, School of Sociology, Politics & International Studies Working Paper Series, (01-20)
Medland L, Anderson B, Bales K, Bogg A, Novitz T, O’Connell J, Pitts FH, Turnbull P (2018) ‘The ‘future’ of work?’, Bristol Law Research Paper Series, University of Bristol.
Policy publications
Burger K, Pitts FH, Risk J (2019) Understanding Productivity Practices: A Review Report. West of England Combined Authority Local Economic Partnership.
Chatterton P, Dinerstein AC, North P, Pitts FH (2019) Scaling up or deepening? Developing the radical potential of the SSE sector in a time of crisis. UN Inter-Agency Task Force on the Social & Solidarity Economy
Research working papers
Measuring and Managing Creative Labour: Value, Time and Billable Hours in the Creative Industries
Co-Working Spaces, Cities and COVID-19: Growth, Crisis, Recovery