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.
Jane Millar
Chair
J.I.Millar@bath.ac.uk
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.
Steve Iafrati
Vice Chair, SPA Opportunities
S.Iafrati@wlv.ac.uk
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.
Rachael Dobson
Secretary
R.Dobson@bbk.ac.ukBirkbeck
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
kevin.farnsworth@york.ac.uk
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
Treasurer (shadowing)
a.ahmed@salford.ac.uk
University of Salford
Anya Ahmed is Professor of Social Science 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. Anya is currently leading the Post Implementation Evaluation of the Welsh Government’s Homelessness Legislation and the Salford BME Dementia study.
Lee Gregory
Membership
L.J.Gregory@bham.ac.uk
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.
PORTFOLIOS
Liam Foster
Editor of Social Policy & Society
l.foster@sheffield.ac.uk
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.
Elke Heins
Publications
elke.heins@ed.ac.uk
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.
Rod Hick
Publications
hickr@cardiff.ac.ukRod Hick is a Senior Lecturer in Social Policy at the School of Social Sciences at Cardiff University and Co-editor of the Journal of Poverty and Social Justice (with Dr Gill Main, University of Leeds).
His primary research interests are the conceptualisation, measurement and analysis of poverty, social security, and the capability approach.
Zoë Irving
Conferences (co-opted)
zoe.irving@york.ac.ukUniversity 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.
Misa Izuhara
Editor Journal of Social Policy
m.izuhara@bristol.ac.uk
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.
Markus Ketola
Communications
m.ketola@ulster.ac.uk
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.
Majella Kilkey
Editor of Social Policy & Society
m.kilkey@sheffield.ac.uk
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.
Vikki McCall
Conferences
University of Stirling
Dr McCall is a Senior Lecturer in Social Policy and Housing at the University of Stirling. Her work has included extensive research on the role of front-line workers, users and volunteers and the policy process and the integration of health and housing. This has included exploring front-line worker discretion, interpretations, activities and actions and bridging the gap between policy and practice. Dr McCall has a broad portfolio of social science teaching and research with the University of Stirling. Key interests and publications include work on housing and ageing, volunteering, devolution, poverty, stigma, inequality, gender, urban society, museums and the cultural sector.
Theo Papadopoulos
International Relations
T.Papadopoulos@bath.ac.uk
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.
Enrico Reuter
Awards
enrico.reuter@york.ac.ukUniversity of York
Enrico is Lecturer in Public and Social Policy at the University of York. His current research interests are in self-employment (and the wider context of changing wage-labour conditions and social protection systems), in public service reform (with a focus on the ideational underpinnings of reform trends), and in the crisis of liberal democracy (notably with respect to the principle of popular sovereignty).
Antonios Roumpakis
International Relations
antonios.roumpakis@york.ac.uk
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.
Ellen Stewart
Communications
E.Stewart@ed.ac.ukUniversity of Edinburgh
Ellen is a Chancellor’s Fellow in Social Studies of Health and Medicine in the Usher Institute, University of Edinburgh, and an Associate Director of SKAPE, the Centre for Science, Knowledge & Policy at Edinburgh.
Her research interests are in citizen participation in public services; the voluntary and community sector; critical approaches to evidence-based policy; and interpretive policy analysis.
Clare Williams
Teaching and Learning
clare.williams@wlv.ac.uk
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.