Tina Hearn

School of Social Policy and Society
Lecturer in Social Policy
Director of Widening Participation and Outreach

Contact details

Address
School of Social Policy and Society
Muirhead Tower
University of Birmingham
Edgbaston
Birmingham
B15 2TT

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.

Biography

During her degree in Social Policy and Social Work, Tina specialised in mental health and subsequently became a specialist mental health social worker, with a particular interest in advocacy and community work.  She was involved in initiating and implementing a project incorporating user involvement and control in mental health services.

Tina undertook doctoral work which focused on developing post-Foucauldian theory, utilising this approach to explore the racialisation of community care policy.  She then went on to become an ESRC post-doctoral fellow involved in a project examining commissioning and contracting in health, local authority and voluntary sector services.

Tina spent some time in both the Strategic Planning Department and the Equalities Unit in a major local authority, examining the racialisation of commissioning and contracting policies and procedures within the strategic planning process; she was also a senior investigating officer in a local authority social services context.  She is actively involved in community politics, in particular, the Black community care forum - she co-authored their landmark community care focused document 'Talking Back'.

Teaching

Tina's specialisms include workshops and events which have a widening participation focus.  She has a particular interest in exploring the relationships between social theory and social policy, with a focus on faith, gender and racialisation.  Tina also teaches strategic policy analysis and policy forecasting in the module 'Prospects for British Social Policy'.

Research

Tina has a particular interest in exploring both the development and the application of post-Foucauldian theory within the politics of policy, faith and racialisation.

Other activities

'Racialisation, social policy, social work and the production of 'other mothers', one of three papers presented in panel session at The Mother War conference, Surrey, June 2009, with colleague Surinder Guru, Harriet Clarke and Nicki Ward.

Recently co-organised a conference on Islamophobia and Social Work with University colleagues and BASW, for which she is authoring the conference report.

Paper entitled 'Islamophobia and the politics of desire' (forthcoming).