Brendan Burchell

Brendan J Burchell is a professor at the Faculty of Human, Social, and Political Science at the University of Cambridge and a professorial fellow of Magdalene College, Cambridge. He was a director of graduate education in sociology 2008–2012 and head of the department of sociology from October 2012 to October 2014. Burchell is the current director of studies in politics and sociology for Magdalene College and was the director of the Cambridge Undergraduate Quantitative Methods Centre (CUQM) between 2014 and 2018.

Burchell read his undergraduate degree in psychology at Birmingham University from 1977 to 1980, and went on to gain a PhD in social psychology from Warwick University researching person perception under laboratory conditions. He then took a one-year post at The City University teaching social psychology, statistics and computing. His career took a change of direction when, in 1985, he was appointed to the Department of Applied Economics at Cambridge as a research officer to assist in a project entitled the Social Change and Economic Life Initiative, working collaboratively with economists, social psychologists and sociologists on a variety of aspects of labour markets and their effects on individuals. In 1988 Dr Burchell transferred from the Department of Applied Economics to take a Lectureship in the Faculty of Social and Political Sciences, specialising in the teaching of data analysis, psychological aspects of unemployment, work intensification, job insecurity as well as undergraduate project work.

In 2011 Burchell was awarded the Pilkington Prize, a University of Cambridge award for excellence in teaching.

Burchell's recent research projects have included the effects of labour market experiences on psychological well-being, work intensification and job insecurity; predictors and correlates of the transition into self-employment; managers' and employees' different perspectives on jobs, part-time work and gender differences in working conditions and careers, restless leg syndrome and financial phobia. He has held numerous research grants published widely in the academic literature; his work has been featured widely in newspapers and social media. In 2019 his team's work on the Employment Dosage Project received widespread media coverage in new sites such as The Guardian,  The Independent, ITV, the Telegraph, the Metro, and Vice. He has supervised 25 PhD students.

Most recently, Professor Burchell lead a team of researchers at the University of Cambridge in monitoring a trial of the 4 day working week for 61 UK based companies. To date, it is the world's largest trial of the 4 day working week.