The SPA’s activities are co-ordinated by an elected Executive Committee. All members of the SPA are eligible to stand and elections for the Executive Committee are held at the AGM during SPA’s Annual Conference. The SPA is committed to promoting the discipline of Social Policy and representing its members’ interests. If you would like to discuss a particular issue with the SPA Executive or are interested in joining the Executive then please contact the relevant Executive member below.
Ruth Lister, Baroness Lister of Burtersett
President
University of Loughborough
Baroness Lister (CBE, FAcSS) is Emeritus Professor of Social Policy and her work is largely focused on poverty and citizenship. In both cases this has embraced theoretical, conceptual, empirical and policy analysis and has involved a strong gender dimension.
She received the SPA Lifetime Association award in 2010. She was appointed to the House of Lords as a Life Peer in 2011, where she sits as a member of the Labour Party.
Elke Heins
Editor of Social Policy Review
University of Edinburgh
Elke Heins is Lecturer in Social Policy and Deputy Director (Research) of the Graduate School of Social and Political Science at the University of Edinburgh. Her principle research area is comparative and European social policy. She is particularly interested in labour market and unemployment policy as well as well as the politics of health and wellbeing. She is currently one of the co-editors of Social Policy Review.
Antonios Roumpakis
University of York
Antonios is a Lecturer in Comparative Social Policy at the University of York. Antonios completed his PhD at the University of Bath and his dissertation focused on the comparative governance of pension funds. His current research interests centre on the political economy of familistic welfare regimes, debt and asset-based welfare, comparative research methods, the politics and impact of austerity policies and the changing socio-economic governance in Europe.
Jane Millar
Chair
University of Bath
Jane Millar, OBE FBA FaCSS is Professor of Social Policy at the University of Bath, where she was also Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Research) from 2008 to 2015. Jane is also the Chair of the REF Main Panel C: Social Sciences for REF 2021. Her research interests include lone parents and welfare to work; social security and tax credits; poverty; and family policy.
Rachael Dobson
Secretary
Birkbeck
My research involves the study of welfare practices, with a specific focus on conceptions of support. I also use welfare practices as a starting point to think about state relationalities and policy and practice ontologies. My empirical work has spanned social housing, homelessness and prisons, and privatised and faith-based refugee and asylum seeker provision. I draw on critical social policy pedagogies and scholarship, and I am an editorial collective member of the journal Critical Social Policy. This involves maintaining a commitment to anti oppressive and anti-racist teaching and research practice.
Kevin Farnsworth
Treasurer
University of York
Kevin is reader at the University of York, where he joined in September 2014. Previously he was senior lecturer at the University of Sheffield and he has held visiting Professorships at the University of Toronto and Carleton University, Canada. Kevin has a BA (Hons) in Social Policy, MSc in Research Methods and PhD in Social Policy.
His research interests include business and public policy; corporate power; corporate welfare and economic crisis; and welfare states.
Kevin is also the co-editor of the Journal of International and Comparative Social Policy.
Anya Ahmed
University of Salford
Anya Ahmed is Senior Lecturer in Social Policy at the University of Salford, UK, and the head of social policy at the School of Health and Society. She has led a range of externally funded research projects examining the experiences of less heard communities with a particular focus on how shifting forms of belonging reflect social change and continuity.
Her recent publications focus on gender, ageing and migration. Anya is currently leading the Post Implementation Evaluation of the Welsh Government’s Homelessness Legislation and the Salford BME Dementia study.
Dr Ahmed is Post Graduate Research International (PhD) Programme Lead in the School of Nursing, Midwifery, Social Work and Social Sciences at the University of Salford.
Majella Kilkey
Editor of Social Policy & Society
University of Sheffield
Majella is a reader in Social Policy and research aims to understand how the processes and outcomes of globalisation affect citizenship, with ongoing research projects around migration, transnationalism and citizenship, with the present economic crisis and austerity in Europe being a particular focus.
She is the co-editor of Social Policy & Society and an elected editorial member of the Journal of Social Policy.
Catherine Needham
Editor of Social Policy Review (lead)
University of Birmingham
Catherine Needham is a Reader in Public Policy and Public Management. Her research interests include personalisation and coproduction within public services; social care reform; workforce change in public services;and interpretive approaches to public policy.
She is the co-editor of the Social Policy Review.
Clare Williams
Teaching and Learning (chair)
University of Wolverhampton
Clare is a Senior Lecturer in Social Policy with teaching interests in teaching connected to children and family policy in the UK. Her recent research contributions include work on the experiences of behaviour change and hate crime within the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning (LGBTQ) community in Dudley and on redefining poverty in an age of austerity and retrenchment.
John Hudson
Editor of Social Policy Review
University of York
Professor John Hudson is the Co-Director of the Centre for Research in Comparative and Global Social Policy with in the Department of Social Policy & Social Work and he specialises in comparative analysis of the politics of social policy. His recent publications include Culture and the Politics of Welfare: Exploring Societal Values and Social Choices (with Nam K. Jo and Antonia Keung), Understanding the Policy Process (with Stuart Lowe) and The Short Guide to Social Policy (with Stefan Kühner and Stuart Lowe).
Steve Iafrati
Grants officer
University of Wolverhampton
As well as lecturing at the University of Wolverhampton, Steve's research interests focus on how specific groups in neighbourhoods experience poverty and/or are able to engage with services.
His research is mainly carried out within localities and often in partnership with voluntary and public sector organisations; recent examples include food banks, hate crime, drug treatment services and caste discrimination.
Markus Ketola
Website Manager
Ulster University
Markus joined Ulster University in 2013 as a Lecturer in the School of Criminology, Politics and Social Policy. Previously, from 2011-2013 he was at the Social Policy Department at the LSE, where he also received his PhD in social policy (2011) and MSc in Management of NGOs (2004).
Markus' research interests include the role of civil society organisations in social policy design and delivery, and the social policy of the populist rightist parties in Europe.
Harriet Churchill
Membership Secretary
University of Sheffield
Harriet joined the Department of Sociological Studies at Sheffield in September 2008 having previously taught at the University of Manchester (2005-2008) and been a Research Fellow in the Department of Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Leeds (2003-2005).
Her research interests bridge social policy and sociology with a focus on the analysis of policies, services and everyday lived experiences in relation to childhood, young people, parenthood and family support.
Hardeep Aiden
Postgraduate Representative
University of Bristol
Hardeep is a doctoral researcher at the School for Policy Studies, University of Bristol. Prior to this he completed his undergraduate studies in Mathematics at Imperial College London, followed by an MSc in Modern Japanese Studies, for which he was awarded a Distinction as well as the Arthur Stockwin Prize for the best dissertation in the programme, and an MSc in Comparative Social Policy at the University of Oxford.
His research explores the practices and processes at work within and across the institutions that are shaping migration-related policies and policymaking processes in Japan, and the actors involved in these processes.
Lee Gregory
Early Careers
University of Birmingham
Lee joined Birmingham's Department of Social Policy and Social Work in September 2013 as a Lecturer in Social Policy.
His principal research interests include poverty, inequality and asset-based welfare, youth policy, the mixed economy of welfare and alternative forms of welfare provision. His current research focuses on the themes of resistance to austerity and the dominance of neo-liberal economics by applying the social theory of time to policy analysis.
Zoë Irving
Social Policy Review Editor
University of York
Zoë is Senior Lecturer in Comparative and Global Social Policy. She is co-editor of the Journal of International and Comparative Social Policy and is a former co-editor of the Social Policy Review.
Her current research interests are located around the question of size within welfare state analysis and the ways in which approaches from political economy, sociology and anthropology can inform a better understanding of differences in social policy development in small and large states.
Theo Papadopoulos
International Relations
University of Bath
Theo works in the Department of Social and Policy Sciences at the University of Bath where he lectures and conducts research in comparative and European social policy.
His research interests include the political economy of familistic welfare regimes, migration and welfare, the politics and impact of austerity policies and the changing governance of social welfare in Europe and, more recently, in Latin America.
Liam Foster
Editor of Social Policy & Society
University of Sheffield
Liam Foster is a Lecturer in Social Work at the University of Sheffield.
His current research interests centre on pensions and pension systems, funeral provision, and theories of ageing. His research has tended to focus on inequality, poverty and social exclusion, especially in relation to gender and age. Liam is on the Teaching and Learning Committee and has a particular interest in teaching quantitative methods.
He is the co-editor of Social Policy & Society.
Misa Izuhara
Editor Journal of Social Policy
University of Bristol
Misa Izuhara is a Reader in Comparative Policy Research at the School for Policy Studies, University of Bristol. Her research interests are in the areas of housing and social change, ageing and intergenerational relations, and comparative policy analysis both nationally and internationally.
She is the co-editor of the Journal of Social Policy and is also the current Chair of the East Asian Social Policy (EASP) Research Network.
Patricia Kennett
Editor Journal of Social Policy
University of Bristol
Patricia is a Reader in Comparative Policy Studies and Co-ordinator of the Comparative and International Policy Analysis Research Programme. Her research lies at the intersection of the interdisciplinary fields of urban and transnational studies, and social policy.
She is the co-editor of the Journal of Social Policy and an editorial board member of the Journal of International and Comparative Social Policy.