Citizenship & CommunitiesMeet our experts
Dr Chris Deeming is a Senior Lecturer in Social Policy, his work in the area of citizenship and communities examines how social investment and inclusive growth inspired policies and perspectives can strengthen citizenship rights and foster social cohesion and inclusion.
Professor Bernard Harris is a historian of social policy and social welfare. His work in the area of citizenship and communities includes papers on the history of both mutual aid and philanthropy. His paper on the relationship between mutual aid and the development of the British welfare state has recently appeared in the Journal of Policy History. A second paper (co-authored by Graham Crow and Sue Rawcliffe, on the history of the Paisley Community Development Project, has been published in the Community Development Journal.
Dr Daniela Sime is is Professor of Youth, Migration and Social Justice. Daniela has over 20 years of expertise in research and consultancy work. Her research promotes children and young people's rights, citizenship and a justice agenda that addresses social inequalities, especially in relation to traditionally marginalised groups, such as young people affected by poverty, migrants and refugees. Until recently, she was PI on a UK-wide project funded by the ESRC on Eastern European migrant young people living in Britain, which focuses on issues of identity, citizenship and belonging and the impact of Brexit on their lives.
Beth Weaver is a Professor in the School of Social Work and Social Policy, Associate Director, SCCJR, a research consultant for the Centre for Youth and Criminal Justice and an appointed member to SAPOR. Her research interests and current projects are in the areas of desistance; user involvement and co-production; the regulation and governance of post-release and community supervision; experiences of punishment; the employment rights of people with convictions; and the management of those classified as high risk of serious harm.
Dr Emma Miller is a Senior Research Associate. Emma has a background in social work practice, and interagency working. Since completing her PhD in 2004 she has worked between research, policy and practice on the theme of personal outcomes. Based on knowledge exchange and action research, this has focused on embedding an outcomes approach to practice, and has involved partnership between a wide range of national bodies and local organisations to re-orient culture, systems and practice accordingly. The primary purpose of this work is to support outcomes focused and person centred engagement at the frontline, with a secondary purpose to measure outcomes and use this information for service planning and improvements. In the past few years the work has drawn increasing interest from wider UK and international universities and agencies. Emma has fourteen years’ experience of working between research, policy and practice to ensure that what matters to people is at the heart of service provision.
Dr Robert Rogerson is an urban geographer and director of Institute for Future Cities conducting research into citizen e-participation in smart cities and into “welcoming cities” that respect dignity and heritage as part of their hospitality. He is currently involved in forming an international network exploring the future of the city centre.
Sally Paul is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Social Work and Social Policy, research consultant for CYCJ and the Centre for Health Policy, co-founder of BRIG, a stakeholder in the Good Life Good Death Good Grief Alliance and the Scottish Representative for the Association of Palliative Care Social Workers. She is actively engaged in a number of research projects and knowledge exchange activities, with specific interests in: death, dying and bereavement; loss; public health approaches to palliative care (including compassionate communities); children and young people; participatory research methods; and practice development.
Dan Heap’s primary specialism is in the organisation and funding of welfare-to-work programmes both in the UK and cross-nationally, the subject of his PhD. He also developing a research agenda relating to the new devolved social security system in Scotland.
Barbara Fawcett is Professor of Social Work in the School of Social Work and Social Policy at the University of Strathclyde. She is also joint Head of School with Professor Trish Hafford-Letchfield. Previously she was Professor of Social Work and Head of the Department of Social Work and Social Care at the University of Birmingham. She was also Director of Internationalisation for the College of Social Sciences and for the School of Social Policy. Before joining the University of Birmingham in 2013, she was Professor of Social Work and Policy Studies at the University of Sydney Australia and the Head of School and Associate Dean (Research). Whilst at Sydney she was the co-director of the Social Policy Research Network. She is an International member of the Hong Kong Social Work Registration Board and the New Zealand Social Work Registration Board. Prior to moving to Australia in 2004, Barbara was head of the large interdisciplinary School of Applied Social Studies at the University of Bradford. At the University of Bradford, she also co-founded and led the Social Care Research and Evaluation Partnership. Barbara spent eight years in the field as a senior practitioner, manager, contract researcher and head of mental health services. Barbara has been an International member of the editorial boards of the journals Critical Social Policy, Child Care in Practice and the British Journal of Social Work. She has been an Executive Board Member of Barnardos, Australia and has worked extensively in the arena of health and social care. Her work has a strong International dimension and collaborations include Hong Kong, China, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand. In relation to Citizenship and Communities her work focuses on social entrepreneurship and participatory form of research and action evaluation.
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Professor Trish Hafford-Letchfield
Trish Hafford-Letchfield is Professor of Social Work and has over 18 years practice experience as a social worker and manager of social care services. Trish’s main research interests are in the experiences of people in later life from marginalised and minoritized groups and how to engage them in designing, developing and evaluating services particularly through the theories of informal and formal learning. She has particular expertise in LGBTQI+ ageing, Trans and Non Binary parenting through the lifecourse, problematic substance use in later life and suicide and ageing. Her research is mostly co-produced with people with lived experience. She is series editor for Policy Press, sex-and-intimacy-in-later-life.pdf (bristoluniversitypress.co.uk). Trish is research fellow at the University of Stellenbosch, South Africa and member of the Research Committee for the British Association of Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP, UK) and member of the International Society of Substance Use Professionals (ISSUP, UK).
Please view Trish's Pure profile here
Nitiwate Meesonk is a Senior Social Worker from the Department of Older Persons under the Ministry of Social Development and Human Security in Thailand. He has been working with Royal Thai Government for 15 years. His area of research interest is social welfare policy for older people in a comparative context with a focus on Thailand.
Ian Montagu is a PhD student undertaking an ESRC-funded studentship within the School of Social Work and Social Policy, using British Social Attitudes survey data to examine changing public attitudes towards both the EU and welfare over the past three decades. Ian has a particular interest in attitudinal research, and was previously a Senior Researcher at ScotCen Social Research working on both the British and Scottish Social Attitudes surveys.
Gillian Macintyre research involves working with groups who have often been marginalised or excluded from communities and have had their citizenship rights challenged or curtailed. More recently she has been working with people with learning disabilities in their capacity as parents exploring their right to a family life as enshrined in the UN Convention on the Rights of Person's with Disabilities. She has also been undertaking work with colleagues at Yale University exploring what citizenship means to groups who have experienced some form of "life disruption", in this instance mental disorder, substance misuse, experience of the criminal justice system or a long-term physical health condition. She is highly committed to the use of participatory and inclusive research methodologies and has a particular interest in peer-research.
Dr Emmaleena Käkelä is a Lecturer in Social Policy. Her research expertise is in the areas of forced migration, asylum inequalities and refugee integration, cultural identity negotiation and the relationship between “honour”-based violence and structural harm. She specialises in creative methods and participatory research with refugee communities and refugee sector organisations. She has previously acted as a Specialist Adviser for the Parliamentary Committee on Women and Equalities for the Inquiry into Equality and the UK Asylum Process.
David Bomark is a PhD candidate whose research project, What we do together, investigates facilitators of associational life and what role volunteering can play in this. His studentship is jointly funded by the ESRC and Volunteer Scotland. David also has previous experience of working in the third sector with volunteers.
Sne Zondo is a PhD candidate whose research is an exploratory study focused on African migrants' mental health support in Scotland. She is interested in how their perceptions and experiences shape their help-seeking behaviours for self-identified mental health issues. She is also interested in how migration as a social determinant of health plays a role in their mental health behaviours and experiences. She is looking at perceptions from both African migrants and mental healthcare service providers. She has experience in working with marginalised groups and healthcare access in South Africa. She is an international student partially funded by the Dean's Global Research Scholarship at Strathclyde.
Please view Sne's Pure profile here
David Kanyumi is a Teaching Associate in social work, graduated from the University of Strathclyde in 2021 and joined the teaching team in 2022. David's research focuses on understanding issues associated with older people's social welfare, street children, women, and people with disabilities and gaining an understanding of how these groups understand their needs and experience social service provision of different local non-governmental welfare organisations committed to supporting people in different situations in present-day. In a non-welfare state such as Tanzania, non-governmental welfare agencies play a significant role in contributing ways in which people affected by diverse conditions could apply to address their issues and bring in changes at individual and community levels.
His research interests are in social security, human rights, and the role of governments in protecting vulnerable groups, including women, Children, people with disabilities and LGBTQ, in the global south, particularly Africa.
David is working on an article titled "Myths and Misconceptions of Disability in East Africa: What is the Role of Social Work in Promoting the Welfare of People with Disabilities in the Region? "
Most of his thesis will soon come out as a book titled "Social Insecurity among the Vulnerable Groups in Tanzania".
Claire Nash is a PhD student undertaking an ESRC and Scottish Government funded project, examining the changing attitudes to poverty, inequality and wealth redistribution. This research will utilise the British and Scottish social attitudes surveys to examine how public attitudes in Scotland and England have changed over the past four decades. Claire’s wider research interests include socio-political psychology, specifically the way in which social and national identity, efficacy and deprivation interact to enhance or inhibit social change.
Lateef Akanni is an applied microeconomist specializing in health and labour economics, and financial economics. He works with large datasets, often with complex structures, and he is interested in recent development in quantitative techniques and their applications to address applied research issues and problems including but not limited to topics in health, and wellbeing. Lateef is currently working on a UKRI-funded project looking at the social effects and wellbeing impacts of policy interventions during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Carmen is an ESRC-funded PhD student in Social Policy investigating attitudes towards welfare systems through the lens of class. Their wider research interests include studying how institutional framing devices serve as catalysts for policy change, in addition to the effects of intersectional identities on perceptions of inequality.
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Saddam Rassanjani is a PhD student in Social Policy. His research project is generously funded by the Indonesian Education Endowment Fund (LPDP). Saddam possesses a profound research interest in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and various poverty alleviation programs. His research is focused on exploring how the SDGs can be instrumental in achieving sustainable development while simultaneously reducing poverty levels in society. His work is expected to contribute significantly to the academic and practical understanding of the interplay between social policy, SDGs, and poverty reduction. Saddam Rassanjani's commitment to his research and his pursuit of knowledge in the field of Social Policy demonstrate his dedication to making a meaningful impact on the welfare of society. His efforts are aligned with the broader goals of advancing sustainable development and addressing poverty-related challenges.