The ILM group has its origins in landmark research conducted within the Department of Applied Economics at Cambridge in the 1960s and 1970s. Classical works in British industrial sociology were conducted through the Department by some of Britain’s most well-known social scientists such as John Goldthorpe, Michael Mann and Rosemary Crompton. Famous projects included Goldthorpe and Lockwood’s affluent worker studies and Frank Wilkinson’s work on segmented labour markets.

The Department of Applied economics was eventually disbanded in 2004, yet one of its former staff, Dr Brendan Burchell – now Reader in the Department of Sociology, contributed to continuing the tradition of high-quality research in work and industrial sociology by founding the Individual in the Labour Market Reading Group in the year 2000.

In existence since then, the ILM is the only group in the Department of Sociology at Cambridge that focuses on the sociology of work and social class, an area of research which has been at the centre of sociological analysis since the foundation of the discipline.