Johanna Weststar
Associate Professor
Cross-Appointed with Psychology
PhD, Industrial Relations & Human Resources, University of Toronto (2007)
Office: SSC 4427
Phone: 519-661-2111 x86148
Email: weststar@uwo.ca
CV
BIOGRAPHY:
Johanna joined the faculty at Western in 2012 after spending four years at the Sobey School of Business, Saint Mary's University in Halifax. Johanna is cross-appointed in the I/O Psychology Area at Western where she supervises graduate students. She is also an Affiliate to the Department of Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies at Western. Johanna specializes in labour and employment relations. Her primary area of research is the video game industry where she is interested in issues of workplace citizenship, representation and unionization, working conditions and the labour process, project management and occupational identity. She has also published research on workplace learning among computer programmers, labour representation on pension boards, pregnancy leave policies, industrial relations climate and the role of labour relations officers and underemployment. Johanna is a Past President of the Canadian Industrial Relations Association (CIRA), a member of the International Labour and Employment Relations Association (ILERA) Executive Committee and the Acting President of the Editorial Committee of the Canadian employment relations journal Relations Industrielles/Industrial Relations. Johanna is also a member of the Interuniversity Research Centre on Globalization and Work (CRIMT). A selection of academic papers are open access at Scholarship@Western and numerous public reports about quality of work life in the digital game industry can be found at GameQoL.
TEACHING INTERESTS:
Industrial and labour relations, labour studies, project management, employee training and development
RESEARCH INTERESTS/SPECIALIZATIONS:
Industrial and labour relations, union renewal, project-based work, digital and cultural labour, representation and citizenship at work, pension board governance, underemployment, workplace learning
RECENT PUBLICATIONS:
Reports
International Game Developers Association Developer Satisfaction Survey (DSS) Reports
Books
Legault, M-J. & Weststar, J. (forthcoming Spring 2024). Not all Fun and Games: Videogame Labour, Project-based Workplaces and the New Citizenship at Work. Montreal, QC: Concordia University Press.
Skerrett, K., Weststar, J., Archer, S. & Roberts, C. (Eds.). (2017). The Contradictions of Pension Fund Capitalism . Labor and Employment Relations Association Research Volume. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Journal Articles
Peetz, D., Preston, A., Walsworth, S. & Weststar, J. (2023). COVID-19 and the gender gap in research productivity: Understanding the effect of having primary responsibility for the care of children. Studies in Higher Education, 48(9): 1428-1439.
Peetz, D., O'Brady, S., Weststar, J., Coles, A., Baird, M., Cooper, R, Charlesworth, S., Pyman, A., Ressia, S., Strachan, G., Troup, C. (2022). Control and insecurity in Australian and Canadian universities during COVID-19 pandemic. Relations Industrielles/Industrial Relations, 77(2), 1-21.
Peetz, D., Baird, M., Banerjee, R. Bartkiw, T., Campbell, S., Charlesworth, S., Coles, A., Cooper, R., Foster, J., Galea, N., de la Harpe, B., Leighton, C., Lynch, B. Pike, K., Pyman, A., Ramia, I., Ressia, S., Samani, M., Southey, K., Strachan, G., To, M. Troup, C., Walsworth, S., Werth, S. & Weststar, J. (2022). Sustained knowledge work and thinking time amongst academics: Gender and working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic. Labour & Industry: A Journal of the Social and Economic Relations of Work.
Weststar, J. & Dubois, L-E. (2022). From crunch to grind: Adopting servitization in project-based creative work. Work, Employment and Society. OnlineFirst.
Legault, M.-J. & Weststar, J. (2021). Organizing challenges in the era of financialization: The case of videogame workers. Work, Organisation, Labour & Globalisation, 15(2): 7-24.
Dubois, L-E. & Weststar, J. (2021). Games-as-a-Service: Conflicted identities on the new frontline of video game development. New Media and Society.
Weststar, J. & Legault, M.-J. (2019). Building momentum for collectivity in the digital games community Television and New Media, 20(8): 848-861.
Campbell, S. & Weststar, J. (2019). Peering inside the ‘black box’: The impact of management-side representatives on the industrial relations climate of organizations. Labor Studies Journal, 45(3): 250-272.
