Anibel
Ferus-Comelo

Director of Community-Engaged Academic Initiatives

Phone: 510-642-9795

anibel@berkeley.edu

Program Area

Labor Studies

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About Anibel

Dr. Anibel Ferus-Comelo draws upon nearly 25 years of community-engaged research and teaching in her joint appointment at the Labor Center and the Goldman School of Public Policy. She directs the Labor Studies Program at UC Berkeley through courses, internships, and collaborative research initiatives. Dr. Ferus-Comelo received the 2021-2022 Chancellor’s Award for Public Service for her design of service-learning internships and collaborative research projects with community partners involving graduate and undergraduate students.

Her research interests focus on labor standards and corporate social responsibility, gender, migration, the political economy of India, and the governance of global supply chains. She has supported the rights of low-wage, migrant workers in the U.S., the U.K., and India within unions and community-based workers’ centers, and has been a consultant researcher and policy analyst for international agencies, including the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development. Dr. Ferus-Comelo began her teaching career at UCLA in Labor and Workplace Studies and Asian American Studies.

Since then, she has taught Sociology of India, Introduction to Gender Studies, International Development, and five modules of a joint union-university Certificate in Global Labor Studies. She has trained labor leaders through the Organizing Academy of the British Trades Union Congress and independent unions in India. Her co-edited book, Globalization, Education and Labor (Routledge, 2010), is an international anthology of labor initiatives to address the changing structure of employment and innovative organizing strategies through worker education. Her scholarship has been published as journal articles and book chapters for a mixed audience of academics and practitioners. Dr. Ferus-Comelo earned a Ph.D. in economic geography from Queen Mary, University of London, and holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in sociology.