Dr Nela (Sanela) Smolović Jones

Professional biography

I am a Senior Lecturer in Organisation Studies at the Open University's Department for People and Organisations. My research focuses on feminist theorising to enhance equality organisationally and societally. I explore the interface between gender and democratic practice, especially areas such as feminist solidarity building, democratic organising, equality in the workplace and organisational forms of gendered corruption. 

As a PhD researcher, I explored the democratic practice generated via the work of civil sector organisations and passed without corrections. I hold an MA in Development Studies from the University of Auckland and an MRes from the Open University. Prior to embarking upon full-time study, I was an experienced interpreter/translator and election monitor, with an extensive background of working with civil sector organisations.

Research interests

In terms of democratic practice, my work focuses on how women (predominantly) organise for equality in the context of liberal democracies. In this area, I have developed an account of affective solidarity building that draws its strength from conflict and difference. Relatedly, I have also explored resistance to gender equality within organisations and how this serves to consolidate partiarchal power and wealth. This research includes an exploration of gendered experiences in party political organisations and, in relation to this, professional segregation and positive discrimination. I have also theorised gaslighting in the public sphere (as opposed to within intimate relationships) to draw attention to how gendered corruption operates in organisations, including public institutions. Drawing on radical democracy, I am developing an account of feminist-activist ethnography, foregrounding a type of axiology necessary for generating democratic practice through research. More recently, I have been shifting my focus to exploring experiences of women with workplace democracy in the context of the former Yugoslavia. 

In relation to equality at work, I am particularly interested in exploring the gendered experiences of women in hospitality employment, especially enactments of care within the workplace. 

My research is informed by: participative democracy, agonism and deliberation; feminist theory; social reproduction theory; performativity; embodiment; ethnography; multimodal and discourse analysis.

Teaching interests

My teaching interests are centred on the research process, poststructuralism, ethics, diversity, equality and leadership.

Impact and engagement

I am the founder and director of the research cluster Gendered Organisational Practice. The cluster provides a space in which feminists of any gender can share insights and knowledge from academic study and practice. It has a supportive approach to exploring issues of gender in relation to workplace exploitation and activism for emancipation in the context of ever-intensifying neoliberal norms and precarity. The cluster also includes a gendered working bodies focus, which studies the intersections between material bodies and the workplace, including the difficulties experienced by workers who menstruate, who have gynaecological conditions such as endometriosis, PCOS and PMDD, and who are going through the menopause.