Academic staff

Will Leggett researches and teaches in the areas of political sociology and social and political theory, with a particular focus on the relationship between social change, ideology and political identities and action.

 

His work lies on the intersection of three intellectual traditions: recent continental philosophy (particularly Levinas, Derrida, Baudrillard and Stiegler), German Idealism (especially Kant and Hegel), and the Frankfurt School critique of culture, technology and capitalization.

His work is located in the critical tradition of social theory that began with the Frankfurt School. This tradition is ...

Helen is an ESRC-funded Postdoctoral Research Fellow within the School of Social Policy.

Puren Aktas is a Research Fellow with expertise in qualitative studies of health systems governance and organisation studies. 

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Jennifer’s work centres on how people move and mobilize to support what they perceive to be viable futures for themselves, their families and their societies in the context of migration. She is drawn to interdisciplinarity and often incorporates the humanities to inform the content and practice of her research. She is passionate about comparative studies in international migration and the ...

Educated at Cairo University and Durham University, Gëzim Alpion lectured at the Universities of Huddersfield, Sheffield Hallam, and Newman prior to his appointment in 2002 in the Department of Sociology at the University of Birmingham. He joined the Department of Political Science and International Studies in 2010 and the Department of Social Policy, Sociology and Criminology in ...

Lorenza Antonucci (she/they) is Associate Professor in the Department of Social Policy, Sociology and Criminology and Deputy Head of Research (Methodology) at the College of Social Sciences at University of Birmingham (UK). Their research is concerned with understanding how societies are changing and reacting to growing socioeconomic insecurity and inequality in Europe and globally.

Professor Adele Atkinson has recently returned to academia after more than a decade working in developing policy, research, and practice in the field of financial literacy and financial well-being at the national and international level for various bodies including the OECD, the G20 and its Global Partnership on Financial Inclusion, and the UN Capital Development Fund.

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Rachel Ayrton is a sociologist with expertise in research methodology and migration.  She is currently a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the Institute for Research into Superdiversity here at Birmingham.

Rachel’s work centres around questions of power and agency, and how these are expressed and constrained in communities that are marginalised and oppressed.  She is particularly ...

Dr Emily Ball joined the University of Birmingham in 2017. She is a Lecturer in social policy and social research methods, who specialises in family policy and welfare conditionality.

Dr Justyna Bandola-Gill is an interdisciplinary scholar working at the intersection of (Global) Public Policy and Science and Technology Studies. In her research, she explores interactions between science and policy, in particular ways in which knowledge is organised, governed and mobilised across different settings in order to achieve political goals.  Her research explores different ...

Nathaniel Barron joined the Department in August 2019. He previously worked at Richmond & Hillcroft Adult Community College, teaching in various areas of Philosophy, including Ancient Philosophy, Political Philosophy, and the Philosophy of Religion. His research is primarily focused on German Social Thought and Continental Philosophy.

Matt is a Professor of Social Policy based in the School of Social Policy. He is interested in understanding inequalities in the areas of social care, social diversity and intergroup relations,  and prosocial behaviour. His expertise is in linking and analysing large-scale surveys and administrative datasets using advanced statistical methods to answer applied substantive and policy and ...

Sarah's academic research is concerned with children and young people’s varied journey impediments and their consequences.

Ideas are drawn from the new mobilities paradigm in order to problematise underexplored areas of children and young people’s lives.In particular, the rejection of static-place based societal understandings, allows movement inequalities to instead be foregrounded. ...

Dr Shelley Budgeon is an Honorary Associate Professor in Sociology who specializes in gender and feminist theory. Her research analyses the impact of various forces of social change on the constitution of gender relations and the performance of gendered identities. Her expertise encompasses theories of gendered subjectivity; feminist politics; gender, postfeminism and neoliberalism; sexuality and ...

Dr Burney is a scholar of religion with experience of working with British Muslim communities. Her research interests include ‘lived religion’ in the West, how individuals negotiate religious identities in post-secular societies and research approaches that tackle the increasing populism and division observed in multicultural societies.

Emma is a Lecturer in Criminology at the University of Birmingham. Her first book, entitled The Lived Experiences of Claiming Wrongful Conviction in Prison, will be published by Routledge Criminology and Criminal Justice in 2023.   

Emma’s research interests include wrongful conviction, the maintenance of innocence and the sociology of prison life. She draws on material from a ...

Heng Choon (Oliver) Chan, is an Associate Professor of Criminology in the Department of Social Policy, Sociology and Criminology (previously affiliated with the Department of Social and Behavioural Sciences at City University of Hong Kong).

He is among the Top 2% of the most highly cited scientists in the world based on the metrics compiled by Stanford University (latest version in October ...

Phil is a political historian of modern Britain, focused on cities, housing and voluntary action. He is also a member of the Civil Society and Volunteering research theme and an associate member of the Centre for Modern British Studies within the Department of History.  

Harriet Clarke has teaching and research commitments to disability and social policy, and supervises doctoral research within the department. Harriet is also Head of Education for the School of Social Policy, responsible for the development and implementation of education strategy with oversight of the School’s teaching programmes. She is a member of the School Senior Management Team, ...

Justin entered higher education as a mature student studying an interdisciplinary social science foundation course with the Open University and then went to the University of Kent as a full time student to study for a degree in Politics and Sociology. After that he went to the University of Warwick to study for an MA in Philosophy and Social Theory followed by a PhD in Sociology.

He ...

Tom teaches on a range of undergraduate and postgraduate modules and is also the School’s Director of Placements and Employability.

Dr Kayleigh Garthwaite is an Associate Professor in the Department of Social Policy, Sociology and Criminology. She is also the Deputy Director of Research (Impact), School of Social Policy.

Kayleigh’s research interests focus on poverty and inequality, social security, and stigma, specifically investigating charitable food provision and food insecurity. Her work is strongly ...

Lisa Goodson is a lecturer in the Department of Social Policy, Sociology and Criminology where she co-ordinates social policy research modules at post graduate level as well as teaching and tutoring on undergraduate modules in new migration. Lisa has been at the forefront of research exploring the experiences and consequences of migration in the UK and Europe. Common themes that cut across ...

Dr James Gregory received his doctorate in political theory before moving into social and housing policy research.  His housing research started at the Fabian Society, where he was a Senior Research Fellow. James is interested in homeownership, asset-based welfare, and neighbourhood research. In addition to a number of think-tank reports, James has recently published papers in Critical ...

Kelly is a Reader in Social Policy based in the Department of Social Policy, Sociology and Criminology. She is the Director of Global Engagement for the School of Social Policy. 

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Tina is a Lecturer in Social Policy and Director of Widening Participation and Outreach.  She has a particular commitment to the University's widening participation programmes and facilitating the inclusion of a diverse range of students within higher education, through a range of Outreach activities.

Ella Holdsworth is a research fellow in the Department of Social Policy, Sociology and Criminology. She is currently part of the Trauma, Social Harm and Health research team, working on a study which seeking validate the Women’s Risk Need Assessment for use with criminalised women in England and Wales.

Her research focuses on experiences of the criminal justice process and community ...

Rana Jawad specialises in the social policies and welfare systems of the Middle East and North Africa region, focusing on broad questions about institutional and political change, programme design and the impact of these on poverty and inequality. She is especially interested in the policy and political dynamics (including policy transfer issues) among international actors and the donor ...

Laura joined the University of Birmingham in October 2017. She previously worked at Durham University and Liverpool John Moores University. Laura’s research interests centre on work with children and young people, particularly in relation to youth crime and justice. She is a member of the Youth Justice Board’s Academic Advisory Panel and a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. She ...

Andrew lectures in Sociology. His interests lie broadly in political sociology, especially the theory and practice of democracy, although he also teaches research methods. Andrew came to Birmingham as a research fellow in 2000, and was appointed as a lecturer in 2002.

Anna in a Lecturer in Criminology. Her teaching and research interests are in prison sociology and the collateral impact of imprisonment on families of prisoners. She has researched the impact of long sentences on partners of prisoners in the UK, the experiences of prisoners serving sentences for sex offences in a therapeutic community and the use of video-call technology in prisons. She ...

Laurence Lessard-Phillips is a Senior Research Fellow who joined the Institute for Research into Superdiversity (IRiS) in May 2016. Her main research interests lie in the perceptions, measurement, and dimensionality of immigrant adaptation; ethnic inequalities in education and the labour market; the transnational behaviour across immigrant generations; and social inequalities and social mobility. ...

Rodolfo (Rudy) Leyva joined the School of Social Policy in September 2021, as a Lecturer in Quantitative Methods.

Rodolfo is a behavioural-social scientist, with specialisms in cognitive sociology, political-economy, and media psychology. His primary and interdisciplinary research draws on leading theories of ideological hegemony, neurocognition, and enculturation, and employs online experiment ...

Dr Paul Luke is a Teaching Associate at the University of Birmingham where he teaches on Social Policy and Sociology. His research focuses on contemporary debates in the UK welfare state, on (Universal) Basic Income as a policy debate, and on utopia as a methodological tool of sociology.

Kelly is a member of the Women, Crime and Justice Research Group (WCJR). She is currently working on Workstream 3 of the Effective Women's Centres Project. 

She has both an academic and practice-based background having supported victim-survivors in a domestic abuse service following the completion of her PhD.  Kelly is also a member of the organising committee for the  Violenc ...

Angelo Martins Jr is an Assistant Professor in Sociology. He undertakes ethnographic research in the areas of difference, intersectionality, social inequalities and decolonial sociological approaches to contribute to debates on Migration, as well as on ‘Modern Slavery’. 

Angelo has carried out extensive research on how differences of ‘race’, class and gender, rooted ...

Pip McKnight is a Research and Impact Fellow in the Institute for Research into Superdiversity where she is working on the reach and influence of the SEREDA project, led by Professor Jenny Phillimore. A registered midwife, Pip’s background supporting pregnant asylum seekers led her research interests in forced migration, gender and reproductive health. She is also skilled in facilitating ...

Daniel is a Lecturer in Criminology in the Department of Social Policy, Sociology and Criminologyat the University of Birmingham. He teaches across the 3 years of the undergraduate programme, as a module convenor for Violence in a Global Context and Crime and Society.  Daniel also supervises a number of final year dissertations, providing advice and guidance on undergraduate research ...

John is a Professor of Social Policy in the Department of Social Policy, Sociology and Criminology, and is currently Director of the Third Sector Research Centre.

Prof Montgomery arrived at Birmingham University in 2017 to take up his current post after twenty years at Oxford University where he was Professor of Psycho-social Intervention. His work is methodologically based in three main areas: Systematic Reviews, Trials (many of them RCTs) and Methods Advances in Complex Interventions. Topically, his work is wide ranging and includes Sleep where ...

Özlem Ögtem-Young is a Research Fellow and Research Theme Lead (Poverty, Precarity, Savings and Debt) for  the Centre on Household Assets and Savings Management (CHASM) within the Department of Social Policy, Sociology and Criminology, developing and undertaking research into issues of poverty, precarity and financial insecurity amongst socially and economically ...

Louise is an Associate Professor in Social Policy and Director of the Centre on Household Assets and Savings Management (CHASM). Her research interests focus on older people and personal finance (and personal finance-related issues), including financial security, financial advice, and the regulation of consumer financial services.

Louise’s research is strongly empirical, but against a ...

Anna Papoutsi is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow (2022-2025) at the School of Social Policy, Sociology and Criminology. Her project, Border time: everyday temporal practices in Athens, Berlin, and Liverpool, aims to unveil, analyse and conceptualise the temporalities of border control and the politics of time involved in migration governance. Border Timeis designed around three urban ...

Simon is a Professor in Social Policy and Criminology currently researching aspects of social harm caused by states and corporations, as well as social structures, in particular the harms caused by inequality. 

Dr Sandra Iman Pertek is ESRC Postdoctoral Fellow and gender and social development specialist with over a decade’s experience in humanitarian, development and migration settings. Her research integrates intersectional and ecological approaches for developing religious engagement with the continuum of violence in forced migration. 

She is a mixed-methods researcher ...

Jenny Phillimore is Professor of Migration and Superdiversity. She is a world leading scholar in refugee integration, superdiversity and access to social welfare with a particular focus on public health.  Jenny is also an expert on Community Sponsorship.

She managers teams of researchers focusing on access to health, education, employment, training, and housing integration with a particular ...

Stefano Piemontese joined the Institute for Research into Superdiversity as a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Research Fellow working on the project Resilience and Resignation among Transnational Roma and non-Roma Youths (2019-2022). Currently, he is a Research Fellow and Member of the Executive Team for the project Improving the Living and Labour Conditions of Irregularised Migrant ...

Dr Marisol Reyes has been the research leader of the Community Sponsorship Scheme (CSS) directed by Professor Jenny Phillimore since 2017. The scheme was implemented by the British government to enable community groups to take on the role of supporting resettled refugees in the UK. 

Marisol has focused her research on the motivations and experience of the sponsorship organisers and ...

Miguel is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Social Policy in the Department of Social Policy, Sociology and Criminology. In his work, Miguel investigates the impact of the social environment on people’s well-being and health, especially of those who face disadvantage in our societies.

Frankie is a Lecturer in Sociology and Director of Undergraduate Admissions in the School of Social Policy.

Her research focuses largely on the role of new media technologies in producing gendered identities, particularly new femininities and new masculinities. Frankie has also collaborated with colleagues in the Birmingham Business School, researching alongside Professor Isabelle Szmigin on ...

Denise Ruprai is a Research Fellow on the Women's Risk Need Assessment (WRNA) project, investigating Trauma and Health in justice involved women, with multiple complex needs, such as substance misuse and mental health difficulties. She has with extensive knowledge of neuropsychology - imaging, anatomy, psychiatry - and trauma related research, along with versatile experience in complex data ...

Professor Nando Sigona has over twenty years of research experience in the field of migration and forced displacement.

He is Chair of International Migration and Forced Displacement at the University of Birmingham, UK where he teaches sociology of migration, displacement and citizenship. He is the Director of the Institute for Research into International Migration and Superdiversity(IRIS). ...

Chris teaches on a range of undergraduate and postgraduate modules in the Department of Social Policy, Sociology and Criminology. His research largely focuses on the sociology of health systems and organisations. During his time at the University Chris has also held Research Fellow posts with the Centre on Household Assets and Savings Management (CHASM) and Health Services Management Centre ...

Neil (he/him) is a sociologist and Science and Technology Studies scholar. A key focus has been innovation in biotechnology, and he has conducted research about the politics of stem cell science, mitochondrial donation, and cultured meat, among others.

Neil has conducted a diversity of public and policy engagement activities. This includes multiple appearances in newspapers and broadcasts across ...

Dr Evelyn Svingen is an Assistant Professor in Criminology with an interest in the biosocial mechanisms of etiology of crime. Her main research area is within the fields of evolutionary psychology and behavioural economics, in which she uses game theory experiments in order to explain how people cooperate as a group and how it might lead to criminal behaviours. 

She is also interested in ...

Andras's research focuses on the measurement and statistical analysis of social networks (both offline and online) in various settings. He interested in how social relations evolve over time and how they affect individual and group outcomes. He has experience collecting empirical data and modelling such phenomena in educational and professional contexts. In line with these interests, Andras's ...

Emma is a Lecturer in Criminology and a fellow of higher education; she was awarded her PhD at University of Liverpool. That thesis led to the monograph: Life Courses of Young Convicts Transported to Van Diemen's Land. Emma is an historical criminologist who uses digital technologies with historical documentation and criminological methodologies. An elected member of the Royal Historical Society.

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Dr Samantha Weston is an Associate Professor at the University of Birmingham. Her expertise lies within the area of risk prevention and early intervention. Specifically, Samantha’s research focuses on the role of the police within these spaces in ‘managing’, ‘controlling’ and ‘responding to’ what might be otherwise considered already marginalised ...