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On Wednesday 12 October, Professor Jane Dixon will present one of C3 Collaborating for Health’s international breakfast seminars in London, reporting on the preliminary findings from an Australian project that has been examining the interplay of working-time arrangements and the ways of living that prevent chronic disease. The ‘Work, Time and Health’ project concerns two significant trends: first, the explosion of chronic diseases internationally and, secondly, the transition to changing working-time regimes through the deregulation of working-hour regimes, including flexible work arrangements.

Time for health is shaped by different overlapping facets of working time – flexibility, predictability, quantity, sociability of hours, intensity and so on. While there is a growing body of research regarding the health implications of shift work and long hours of work, other forms of labour-market engagement are less studied. Further, there has been little attention paid to work-time flexibility and whether it assists workers to practise lifestyle behaviours. Jane and her colleagues conducted two studies that both found that the vast majority of workers prioritised work over other aspects of life. Participants were using their work-time arrangements to anchor all other routines, including the routines of food intake, physical activity and sleep. Jane’s presentation will outline specific findings from both studies, and it will offer a sociological perspective on the mechanisms that connect working time to health practices.

Jane is senior fellow at the National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health, Australian National University and a visiting research fellow at the International Institute for Global Health, United Nations University. Through 2016 into 2017, Jane is Leverhulme Trust Visiting Professor based at the Centre for Food Policy, City, University of London. Her research takes place at the intersection of cultural sociology and public health, and focuses on transformations within national food systems with special interests in consumer power, commodity chains, food retail and the nutritionalisation of the food system.

We hope you will be able to join us from 8:30am until 10:00am on Wednesday 12 October at CAN Mezzanine, 7–14 Great Dover Street, London SE1 4YR. Breakfast will be available from 8:00am.