Industrial Relations research lives on through TEACHO Fellowship

The Board of Directors of TEACHO Ltd. has awarded PhD student Sherry Huang with the inaugural Dr. Daryll Hull Memorial Fellowship in Industrial Relations.

Dr. Daryll Hull was the Executive Chair of TEACHO Ltd. for a decade until September 2021, when he passed away suddenly. A member of the University of New South Wales alumni, he is credited with being the first student to complete a PhD in Industrial Relations in NSW, possibly Australia.

‘Daryll Hull really was one-of-a kind’, said TEACHO Chair, Paul Ryan. ‘His contribution to industrial relations in Australia through his research and countless years of work with government, unions, and employers is unparalleled. When Daryll left us, the directors unanimously agreed to carry on his work in his memory. This fellowship is a small part of that’.

TEACHO Director, Michael Quinlan chaired a selection committee of academics and industrial relations experts tasked with selecting the recipient from a field of highly talented industrial relations students, each undertaking unique research projects with potentially wide-ranging benefits.

‘The selection panel was greatly encouraged by the depth of talent’, remarked Michael Quinlan. ‘Industrial relations research is well and truly alive. Daryll would have been impressed by the quality of applications, and we are honoured, through this fellowship, to encourage and support ongoing research in a field of increasing importance within the current geo-political landscape’.

Sherry Huang, a student of Victoria’s LaTrobe University said, ‘It is an honour to be chosen as the first Dr. Daryll Hull Memorial fellowship recipient. I would like to thank the Directors and selection committee for the interest in my research’.

The title of Sherry’s thesis is: The rise of the temporary migrant working class: A social movement perspective on temporary migrant workers in Australia’s food supply chain, the possibility of mobilisation and collective action.

Sherry offers an insight into her work, stating ‘My research studies day-to-day workplace relations, how and why employers and migrant workers engage with labour-hire providers, how labour-hire work contributes to exploitation, insecure occupational health and safety, migration and precarity in the platform-based gig economy’.

Paul Ryan presented Sherry with a certificate to commemorate the award at a Meeting of Directors held in Sydney on 14 December 2022.

The meeting was also attended by special guest, Daryll’s wife, Dr. Merryn Hull, who said, ‘I am so pleased that TEACHO has been able to offer this award. And I am thrilled to meet Sherry and see the important contribution she will no doubt make’.

When designing the certificate, Dr. Merryn Hull told TEACHO, ‘Daryll’s words in his last piece of academic writing always inspire me’. The words are immortalised on the Award to inspire Sherry, and future Fellowship recipients:

‘It’s all a question of timing. And courage. And hope’ — Dr. Daryll Hull, 2021.