About Dr. Claire E. F. Wright.
Business historian.
I want to make the world a better place through innovative research and evidence-based practice.
I am a business historian at UTS Business School. My research and teaching focusses on corporate leadership, governance, and gender, class and ethnic diversity in work.
I began my career at the University of Wollongong, with a B.Comm in economics. My Honours project pioneered the use of social network analysis in the history of economic thought, using this technique to understand the community of scholars in interwar Vienna. Despite the language barrier, this project ignited an interest in knowledge, communities and networks.
I then (sort of by accident) moved to the history department at UOW for my PhD. I learnt there to properly contextualise my research, and to analyse archival sources. My PhD project combined my existing expertise in history of economic thought with my new-found abilities in Australian history, to understand interdisciplinary professional communities in the Australian economic history field. This formed the basis of my first book, Australian economic history: Transformations of an Interdisciplinary Field (2022).
After my PhD, I was fortunate enough to work on an ARC Linkage grant, partnered between the Universities of Wollongong, Sydney and Melbourne, and the Macleay and Australian Museums, on “reconstructing museum specimen data through the pathways of global commerce”. I worked day-to-day at the museums to understand the trade of natural history specimens. It was fascinating to see how these institutions operate, and I learnt more than I probably needed to about how to preserve dead bats!
In 2019 I began a Macquarie University Research Fellowship (MQRF) in the Management Department on “Networks of trust, knowledge and power: Interlocking directorates in Australian corporations over the twentieth century”. It was fantastic to be in a business school again, and I learnt so much from my colleagues in leadership, strategy, corporate governance and international business. I examined connections amongst Australia’s corporate elite, and the impact of companies that are too closely connected to one another. Understanding the lives and careers of top company board members identified some women with formal company roles since the 1980s, and the importance of family and marriage for women’s agency in the corporate sector throughout the twentieth century.
The data and insights of the MQRF was the basis of my current Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA) Fellow (2022-25), “Above the glass ceiling: Australian women in corporate leadership, 1910 – 2020”. I have happily remained in a management department, but have moved to the UTS Business School. I have applied my expertise in women’s workplace equality to the topic of Diversity and Inclusion, teaching as part of the UTS Business Masters’ suite.
Outside of research and teaching, I serve on the editorial board for Enterprise and Society, and the executive of the Economic History Society of Australia and New Zealand (EHSANZ). I also established an economic history stream at the annual Australian Historical Association (AHA) conference. Through this work I advocate for economic history as a broad, eclectic, interdisciplinary agenda, connected to parent disciplines and contemporary issues.
When I’m not at work, I quite like outdoorsy things (hiking, swimming, photography), indoorsy things (music and theatre) and a combination of indoorsy and outdoorsy things (looking after my plants)!
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Currently
ARC DECRA Fellow at UTS Business School
I acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. In particular, I acknowledge that I live and work on the unceded lands of the Dharawal and Gadigal people. This always was, and always will be Aboriginal land. I pay my respect to their Elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islander peoples today.
All thoughts and opinions posted on this website are my own, and not reflective of the institutions I may represent.
Copyright 2022 Claire E. F. Wright