Isabelle Ferreras

The initiative has gotten wide attention both in the global media and among academic scholars. As of May 2021 more than 6,700 individuals have signed the initiative.

In May 2020, Isabelle Ferreras, Julie Battilana and Dominique Méda initiated a global initiative for democratising work and workplaces. They call attention to how the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted what they see as "cracks and vulnerabilities" of our economy and political system. Specifically, the poor working conditions of the workers who kept societies running throughout the COVID-19 crisis involved both mental and physical risks. The authors point out that the workers usually are "members of radicalized communities, migrants and informal economy workers" which they term "essential workers". The authors call for a "democratisation of firms" and that workers should be given a voice and be a part of the governing of a firm and that their wages should be increased. Furthermore, Ferreras, Battilana and Méda argue that the lives of working humans should not only be governed by market forces and capital investors. They call for a "decommodification of work" and claim humans are not just resources or commodities that instrumentally provide a service for an employer. On the contrary, people invest themselves and engage in their jobs, which Ferreras calls "labor investment". The three scholars have summarised their message in a "working manifesto" which is published in the book Le Manifeste Travail – Démocratiser, Démarchandiser, Dépolluer. Shortly after announcing the initiative publicly as a press release in 36 countries, additional five female scholars backed the project to created awareness in the academic community across different disciplines. These are Julia Cagé, Lisa Herzog, Sara Lafuente Hernandez, Hélène Landemore and Pavlina Tcherneva.

Ferreras works in political sociology, sociology of economics, and political theory. She is interested in topics such as worker's experiences, democratic equality in capitalist societies, corporate governance, labor-manager relations, unions, and the labor market. In 2017 Ferreras published a book called "Firms as Political Entities – Saving Democracy through Economic Bicameralism" which received wide attention in the academic field. She is also a co-founder of the #DemocratizingWork movement and a co-author of its manifesto.

In her book Firms as Political Entities: Saving Democracy through Economic Bicameralism (2017), Ferreras presents her theory of democratic corporate governance. She claims that firms should be recognised as political entities and that firms are the institution in democratic societies that best embody the tension of between capitalism and democracy. Firms rule the global economy but are governed by capital inverstors. When taking managerial decisions investere do not only determine the future of the company but also the worker's future, and the future of the community in which the company exists. Ferreras proposes to democratise firms to make them fit the context of democratic societies by implementing economic bicameralism in companies. The book consists of three main parts:

In 2016, Ferreras and Hélène Landemore published a paper where they argue that businesses can be seen as analogous to states. They claim that firms should be governed democratically due to the organisational similarities. Ferreras and Landemore advocate for the need of further development of a political theory of the firm. Furthermore, Ferreras has conducted several empirical case studies of workers in collaboration with different academic colleagues. Together with Jean De Munck she has examined the voice of workers in restructuring processes in a Volkswagen plant in Brussels. In another qualitative case study Ferras has examined a Freelancers' cooperative called SMart-Belgium as a case of "democratic institutional experimentation for better work" along with Julien Charles and Auriane Lamine.

In 2004 Ferreras obtained a PhD in Sociology from the University of Louvain as well as a MSc in Political Science from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 2000, Ferreras was a visiting scholar at University of Wisconsin-Madison. In 2005 she graduated from the Harvard Trade Union Program.

Isabelle Ferreras (born 21 August 1975) is a Belgian sociologist and a political scientist. She is a professor of sociology at the University of Louvain (Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium) where is affiliated with the Centre de recherches interdisciplinaires Démocratie, Institutions, Subjectivité. She is also a senior research associate at the Labor and Work life Program at Harvard Law School. Furthermore, Ferreras is a tenured fellow of the Belgian National Science Foundation (F.N.R.S., Brussels). Since the spring of 2017 she has been a member of the group called Classe Technologie et Société in the Royal Academy of Sciences, Humanities and the Arts of Belgium where she in 2021 and 2022 holds the position as president of the academy as well as the chairman of her group.