News and events archive

Measles and migrants

In the past two years, Europe has recorded more than 22,000 cases of measles: a sharp reversal of the 96% decline of the last 20 years. Why is it happening and who is at risk? New LSE research led by Gemma Williams from LSE Health sheds some light on the issue.

First born children of women in their thirties perform best in tests of mental development and psychological well-being

The firstborn children of mothers in their thirties score more highly on measures of mental development and psychological well-being than children born to other first time mothers reveals new research by Dr Alice Goisis, a researcher in Demography at LSE.

According to the research, which has been published in the December issue of the journal Biodemography and Social Biology, mothers who give birth to their first child in their thirties tend to have characteristics which help make their children perform better when measured on these outcomes at age five.

Research Highlights: Women on the beat

2015 marks 100 years since Edith Smith became the first female police officer in Britain with powers of arrest. Today, women make up 28 per cent of the force but the struggle for acceptance is far from over.
On the 100^th anniversary of Edith Smith’s trailblazing appointment, Professor Jennifer Brown, the co-director of LSE’s Mannheim Centre for Criminology is about to embark on a detailed survey of gender discrimination and harassment in the police force across England and Wales.

Cost is the biggest barrier to young people's participation in sport because a third live in poverty

Schools should open up their facilities at evenings and weekends to enable more young people to take part in sport. This is just one of a series of recommendations from an LSE study which found that cost is the biggest barrier to young people’s participation in sport because a third live in poverty.

Professor Anne Power and her team at LSE Housing and Communities, on behalf of the charity StreetGames, interviewed young people between the ages of 14-25 and local parents in order to uncover what young people do, what they think of their area, why they play sport or don’t and what the barriers to involvement are.

Academics Abroad

Dr Leonidas Cheliotis, Department of Social Policy, gave a plenary lecture on 'Political Systems and Punishment: The Challenges of Democratisation' at the 2nd Latin American Congress on Crime and Society, in Argentina from 10-12 December.

On Thursday 10 December, he also gave two guest seminars, on 'The Political Economy of Punishment and Immigration' and 'The Psychology of Penal Populism', at the Law School of Universidad Nacional del Litoral, in Santa Fe.

LSE Health broadens engagement with China

LSE Health has announced a range of new initiatives with Chinese partners across academia and government, including a collaboration with the School of Public Health at Fudan University to explore issues of policy reform in China’s developing health-care system, joint research with Peking University, and a Sino-European forum on food and medicine quality.

Transparency, big data and international cooperation at the heart of Korean health system success

A transparent system, data analysis and active international cooperation are at the heart of Korea’s successes in health system development said Dr Myongsei Sohn, President of the Korean Health Insurance Review and Assessment Service (HIRA), at a public lecture hosted by LSE Health.

Global Girls Research Initiative Launched

Dr Ernestina Coast and Professor Lucinda Platt from the Department of Social Policy are two of a number of LSE academics involved in an exciting new ‘Global Girls Research Initiative’ (GGRI) funded by DfID for nine years and led by the Overseas Development Institute.  The GGRI, which was formally launched on the 23rd November focuses on adolescence, a time of life that is critical to development but that remains fraught for poor adolescent girls in low- and middle-income countries. The GGRI will be conducting a multi-country longitudinal research programme; and Ernestina will be involved in research on sexual and reproductive health, while Lucinda will be providing input into survey instruments. Both will be involved in capacity-building activities relating to the programme of work. 

Academics Abroad- Professor Anne West

Anne West, Professor of Education Policy, holds the 2015 Fritz Karsen Chair at Humboldt University in Berlin. Earlier this month she visited Berlin, meeting with professors, researchers and graduate students, and working on two articles with Professor Rita Nikolai.  Two proposals for international conferences in Berlin and in Hannover were submitted, one of which also involves Dr Sonia Exley. Further collaborative research is planned.

An LSE South Asia Centre Event

Made in Bangladesh, Cambodia and Sri Lanka

Dr Sanchita Banerjee Saxena discussed her recent book, which explores the labour behind the global garment and textiles industries. Click here for more details on the book.

Chair: Professor David Lewis

Department of Social Policy and Manheim Centre for Criminology Book Launch Discussion

Stop and Search: assessing a police power

Speakers:  Professor Ben Bowling, Dr Rebekah Delsol, Dr Victor Olisa, Professor Robert Reiner, Dr Michael Shiner 
Chair: Professor Jennifer Brown

This panel event showcased findings from a new edited collection on police stop and search. The implications were discussed by a range of experts.

Dr Kitty Stewart contributes to LSE British Politics and Policy Blog on child poverty measurement

The Welfare Reform and Work Bill, currently going through the House of Lords, proposes to remove all income and material deprivation measures from the Child Poverty Act. By doing so, the government is acting against the advice of 99% of respondents to its own consultation on the matter, find Nick Roberts and Dr Kitty Stewart.

Academic Abroad- Professor Lucinda Platt

Professor Lucinda Platt was invited to give the opening lecture at an International Seminar on Design, Collection and Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Mexico, held at CIDE, Aguascalientes, Mexico from the 19-20 November. The seminar was held to examine the potential and options for a Mexican Longitudinal study, and involved researchers and representatives of longitudinal surveys from a range of countries, discussing practical issues and presenting case studies, as well as Mexican academics and members of the Mexican Statistical agency. Professor Platt's lecture addressed the question 'Why do we need cohort and longitudinal surveys?

New flat rate state pension will lead to benefit cuts for some groups

A new report involving LSE academics has found that low earning renters stand to lose the most from planned reforms to state pensions and long-term care if they are not protected.

The introduction of a single-tier pension scheme in April 2016, coupled with changes to long-term care financing in 2020, will affect pensioners in different ways, according to a report released this week co-authored by researchers from LSE’s Personal Social Services Research Unit (PSSRU).

A Middle East Centre Event

Women's health in the Occupied Palestinian Territory

This event represented the culmination of a collaborative research project between the LSE and Birzeit. Dr Tiziana Leone, Dr Ernestina Coast, Professor Rita Giacaman and Doaa Hammoudeh presented their research on the health-related impacts of conflict in the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt), focusing specifically on the gender associations of these impacts.

New LSE Housing Academy for social landlords launched

The National Communities Resource Centre and LSE have launched the new Housing Plus Academy.

The Academy will help housing associations remain viable social businesses by supporting the communities where they work in a period of austerity. It will be hands-on and action-oriented locally while driving home policy messages among decision-makers.

Dr Timothy Hildebrandt in the South China Morning Post on the end of China's one-child policy

Dr Timothy Hildebrandt says that with the end of China’s one-child policy, family expectations to produce an offspring will eventually ease on the only child who happens to be gay or lesbian.

Government regulation and industry practices stalling drug development finds new report

The majority of new medicines entering the market offer few clinical advantages over existing alternatives according to a new analysis article published in the British Medical Journal. The authors of the study, Dr Huseyin Naci and Professor Mossialos from LSE Health,  conclude that both government and industry practices are responsible for the innovation deficit in the pharmaceutical sector. 

Regular brisk walking is best exercise for keeping weight down, says LSE research

People are more likely to have a lower weight if they regularly engage in high impact walking compared to doing another vigorous activity like going to the gym, according to new LSE research led by Dr Grace Lordan, a specialist in health economics and Assistant Professor from LSE Health. The results are particularly pronounced in women, people over 50, and those on low incomes.

Research Funding News- Joseph Rowntree Foundation and LSE partnership to investigate link between poverty and inequalities.

The LSE is delighted to have been awarded £565,000 by theJoseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) for a three-year programme to investigate the links between poverty and inequalities.

The donation establishes a new early career fellowship within the LSE International Inequalities Institute (III) as well as a programme of research on the connections between inequality, diversity and poverty which will be led by LSE’s Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion (CASE).

The research aims to review the relationships between inequalities of various kinds and poverty.

Research Highlight- Working to the death

Should we accept George Osborne’s claim that the UK’s state pension scheme faces collapse unless we increase the retirement age? In a new book released this month, LSE Visiting Professor John Macnicol challenges this view. Professor Macnicol, who is considered one of Europe’s leading academic analysts when it comes to retirement and ageing, is mystified by the public’s willingness to accept the government line.

“The arguments used by policy makers to justify an increase in the eligibility age of the state pension are riddled with uncertainties,” he writes in his book Neoliberalising Old Age.

Academic Abroad- Dr Armine Ishkanian

Dr Armine Ishkanian was an invited speaker at the Vienna Policy Conference (29-30 October) which was organised by the Open Society Foundation in Europe and the ERSTE Stiftung. The annual policy conference brings together civil society organisations, media channels, academics, policy makers and political thinkers to debate the most pressing issues facing Europe. The topic of this year's conference was 'Rebuilding Trust in Europe'.

Research Funding News

Each year, the AXA Research Fund offers twenty-five Post-Doctoral Fellowships to outstanding researchers, awarding 120,000 EUR over two years. For the second consecutive year LSE was successful in this programme and Dr Emily Freemanbegan her new role on 1 October 2015 in PSSRU.
 
Dr Freeman’s research aims to understand how formal provision of long-term social care for vulnerable older adults (aged 50+) in sub-Saharan Africa can be reconciled with ‘traditional African values’ of informal (family) care provision in order to plan interventions that can mitigate the risk of unmet care needs posed by major demographic change in the region.

Research Funding News

Dr Kitty Stewart, from CASE, has received Nuffield Foundation funding to undertake research on segregation in early years settings. The project will use data from the National Pupil Database to address three questions: (1) It will examine the extent of segregation in early education for three- and four-year-olds in England, both in relation to socio-economic background and in relation to ethnicity. (2) It will explore the extent to which these patterns simply reflect geographical segregation, and the extent to which they are exacerbated by differences in the nature of provision in different settings (such as different opening hours and fees for additional hours). (3) It will link children’s data longitudinally to explore the association between pre-school peer group and outcomes at Key Stage 1 (age 7), holding other child and setting characteristics constant.

Research Funding News

Professor Anne Power, LSE Housing and Communities,CASE, has received funding from Trafford Hall to gather new evidence on the impact of the new government’s austerity programme on social landlords and tenants. The research aims to a) draw together and analyse evidence on how new policies are affecting the viability of social landlords and the lives of tenants; b) disseminate this new research widely amongst the social housing sector, with government, other policy makers, delivery bodies, housing academics and students; and c) collect through a workshop / think tank model, direct experiences from those directly affected (both tenants and frontline staff), in order to document and measure real changes and impacts.

Dr Jeroen Luyten awarded McKinsey Company Award

Dr Jeroen Luyten (LSE Health Fellow) was recently awarded the Research Foundation – Flanders (FWO) and McKinsey & Company annual scientific prize. Jeroen received the prize for his excellent PhD research, and for demonstrating the social and economic relevance of his work.

Jeroen Luyten obtained his PhD in 2014 from the University of Antwerp undertaking research on "Equity, efficiency and public health: studies in the ethics and economics of vaccination policy".

Academic Abroad- Dr Panos Kanavos

Together with other project partners coming from a total of 13 academic, governmental, international and professional/patient organisations, Dr Panos Kanavos, Deputy Director at LSE Health, and PhD Fellows Aris Angelis  and Elena Nicod  presented the final results of the ADVANCE-HTA research project, at two Capacity Building workshops in Santiago de Chile (10-11 September) and Warsaw (24-25 September). 

Heavy drinkers and drugs users underestimate their levels of consumption compared to others

Heavy drinkers and users of illegal drugs downplay their relative levels of consumption, when comparing themselves to others, reveals research by LSE and South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust. 

Dr Michael Shiner, an associate professor in LSE’s Department of Social Policy and expert advisor to the Global Drugs Survey, said: “Given that drug use carries certain risks, whether this be to health, of getting caught or of damage to reputation, we shouldn’t be surprised that some people downplay their levels of use as a way of managing their anxieties about what they’re doing.” 

Dr Timothy Hildebrandt at Chatham House

Dr Timothy Hildebrandt appeared at Chatham House where he spoke in response to the premiere of a Channel 4 documentary on gay conversion therapy in China. In a lengthy Q&A he spoke on a number of issues relevant to LGBT Chinese, including the one-child policy, HIV/AIDS, and activism.

The event can be listened to in full online here.  

Department of Social Policy and Department of Anthropology public discussion

Anthropology and Development: challenges for the 21st century

Speakers: Professor James Fairhead, Professor Katy Gardner, Professor David Lewis, Professor David Mosse
Chair: Professor Deborah James

This panel discussion supported the following publication Anthropology and Development: challenges for the 21st century, and included both authors, Professor Katy Gardner and Professor David Lewis who are both LSE academics.

Department of Social Policy Round Table Discussion

Gay and Lesbian Activism Today: Changes and Challenges

Speakers: Dr Daniel Monk, Professor Surya Monro, Dr David Paternotte, Professor Sasha Roseneil, Professor Manon Tremblay
Chair: Dr Hakan Seckinelgin

The event was a round table discussion by eminent academics working on LGBT activism. The discussion related to the newly edited publication The Ashgate Research Companion to Lesbian and Gay Activism.

Research Funding News

Dr Timo Fleckenstein  has been awarded funding under the British Academy's International Partnership and Mobility Scheme. The project will critically assess the opportunities but also the limits of social investment policies developing a long-term strategy for social investment policies in the re-design of welfare states. The research will focus on the UK and South Korea, but will also draw on experiences from other European and East Asian countries (e.g. Germany, Sweden, Japan and Taiwan).

Research Funding News

Dr Polly Vizard, from CASE, has been awarded funding by the Nuffield Foundation to extend knowledge and understanding of multidimensional poverty and disadvantage experienced by children and young people in Britain. The findings will address an important gap in the existing research by providing a new quantitative evidence base on three groups of children: children at risk of abuse or neglect; children from the Gypsy and Traveller ethnic minority group; and young carers.

Research Funding News - LSE awards new projects under HEIF5 Bid Fund

LSE has invested over £5 million of its Higher Education Innovation Fund into the HEIF5 Bid Fund, a competetive source of funding to support knowledge exchange activities and outputs based on School research. Beginning in 2011, the School has made over 48 awards for knowledge exchange and impact (KEI) activities, most recently:
Dr Matteo Galizzi, LSE Health and Social Care, "Big smart data: the case for linking behavioural experiments to survey, administrative, biomarkers and smart-card data".
Dr Polly Vizard, CASE, "Older people's experiences of dignity and nutrition during hospital stays: Raising awareness and achieving impact/influence".

Poor children in London get better grades than those outside due to improvement in the capital's schools

Less than a quarter (22%) of children on free school meals in inner London obtained five or more A*–C grades at GCSE or their equivalent (including English and Maths) in 2002. In 2013, this had risen to almost half (48%). Gains were much smaller among disadvantaged children outside London (17%) to (26%), according to new work, published by researchers associated with the Centre for Social Exclusion (CASE) at LSE and the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS).

Ewa Batyra wins prize at the BSPS Conference.

PhD (Demography) student Ewa Batyra was awarded the prize for the best research poster at the most recent British Society for Population Studies (BSPS) Annual Conference in September 2015.

Dr Timothy Hildebrandt on the gay marriage proposal on the Beijing subway 

Dr Timothy Hildebrandt, assistant professor of Social Policy and Development, was quoted by the BBC in its coverage of a gay marriage proposal on the Beijing subway that has gone viral on social networking sites in the last week. Drawing upon his extensive research on LGBT issues in China, Dr Hildebrandt explained that attitudes on homosexuality are both varied and complex across the country. He also discussed the effect that social policies like China’s one-child policy has on gay ‘only-children', "Parents will think that if their only child is gay, that will end their hopes for grandchildren. It's family pressure which creates a disproportionate pressure on gays and lesbians.

PhD candidate working on Brazil's first community protocol at the International Institute for Environment and Development

Roberta Peixoto Ramos, a PhD candidate at the Social Policy Department, is working on a project to develop the first community protocol in Brazil, which is being implemented at a traditional community in the Brazilian Amazon Forest. The protocol is an instrument that empowers communities to seek opportunities to improve their quality of life, strengthen their collective management of natural resources based on customary laws and seek secure land rights. 

Academics Abroad- Professor Anne West

This year Professor Anne West holds the Fritz Karsen Chair at Humboldt University, Berlin. Over the summer she visited Berlin giving seminars, meeting with graduate students and working on two new comparative research papers with Professor Rita Nikolai, a T. H. Marshall Fellow in the Department of Social Policy in 2010. It is hoped that further collaborative research will follow.

Academics Abroad- Professor Lucinda Platt

Lucinda Platt, of the Department of Social Policy, gave a plenrary lecture on "What can the sociological anaysis of social mobility bring to the immigration debate? Examples and Reflections" at the European Sociological Association's conference in Prague, 25-28 August.  Lucinda also gave another paper on "Elite or middling? International students and migrant diversification" in an 'ordinary session' that she convened under the banner of the migration research network that she is a part of.

Dr Ernestina Coast elected to Guttmacher Institute Board

Dr Coast has been elected to the Board of the Guttmacher Institute. The Institute's overarching goal is to ensure the highest standard of sexual and reproductive health for all people worldwide. Based in the USA, and with a global mandate, the Institute advances sexual and reproductive health and rights through an interrelated program of research, policy analysis and public education.

Internet is both harming and helping older people in social interactions

The report, co-authored by Dr Jacqueline Damant and Professor Martin Knapp,  found that digital technology has the potential to both harm and help social networking. It can lead to a breakdown in traditional forms of social interaction but also allow older people to maintain contact with distant friends and relatives through email and Skype, alleviating loneliness.

Attending church is the key to good mental health among older Europeans

A study of depression among older Europeans has found that joining a religious organisation is more beneficial than charity work, sport or education in improving their mental health. LSE Health's Dr Mauricio Avendano, said the only activity associated with sustained happiness was attending a church, synagogue or mosque.

Drug possession should be removed from police performance indicators, says new LSE study

Drug possession should be removed from police performance indicators to encourage officers to spend more time solving serious crime rather than targeting low level possession of cannabis, according to a new LSE study by Dr Michael Shiner.

Research Impact Case Study-

Helping reform police 'stop and search' powers

LSE research into the 2011 riots in England leads to a review of police powers.Tim Newburn, Professor of Criminology and Social Policy, collaborated with the Guardian in a groundbreaking investigation of the causes of the 2011 riots in England.

Academics Abroad- Professor Stephen Jenkins

Stephen Jenkins, of the Department of Social Policy and the International Inequalities Institute, gave a plenary lecture on "To what extent has income inequality increased?" at the biennial conference of the Society for the Analysis of Economic Inequality (ECINEQ), in Luxembourg, 13-15 July. On 21 July, he taught a one-day course on "Statistical Graphics" in Melbourne, Australia. On 27 July, he gave a keynote address on "Let's think about poverty longitudinally" at the "Towards a More Inclusive New Zealand" Forum in Wellington, New Zealand, and participated in the post-Forum Stakeholders Workshop hosted by New Zealand Treasury the following day. On 28 July, he presented a paper on "Employment instability: a variance components approach" at Motu Research, Wellington.

Less able, better off kids more likely to become high earners than bright poor kids

New research, conducted by CASE's Dr Abigail McKnight for the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission, has exposed the reality of a glass floor in British society that protects less-able better-off children from falling down the social ladder as they become adults.

Single currency has led to increase in generosity, decrease in national pride

New research from LSE economists Dr Joan Costa Font and Professor Frank Cowell (Department of Economics) shows that countries who have adopted the Euro single currency in the past decade have experienced a decline in national pride. However, the knock-on effect is a more generous approach to spreading wealth from rich to poor and a stronger European identity.

Older hospital patients face "widespread and systematic" pattern of poor care

One million older people are affected by poor or inconsistent care in hospitals, according to new research by Dr Polly Vizard and Dr Tania Burchardt  from CASE. 

LSE report shows dementia costs Wales £1.4 billion a year

A new LSE report commissioned by the Alzheimer’s Society, and led by Professor Martin Knapp from PSSRU, reveals the hidden cost of dementia in Wales is estimated at £1.4 billion, an average cost of £31,300 per person each year.

Research Funding News

Professor Martin Knapp, from PSSRU, has received funding from Mind to undertake an economic analysis of their peer support programme and to model the health economic impact of each programme component. The project will also map patterns of referral throughout the programme, for example, how people with mental health problems get referred to peer support groups, how individuals accessing face-to-face support use online peer support and vice versa, and how participants interact with statutory services whilst receiving support.

Research Funding News

Professor Elias Mossialos, from LSE Health and Social Care, has been awarded funding from LSE’s Kuwait Programme to examine the causes of some of the most prevalent chronic diseases and to study the main determinants of access to, utilisation of, and satisfaction with the healthcare system in Kuwait.

Research Highlights: Paying people incentives to make healthy choices only works in the long term if they are paid to NOT do something

Monetary incentives to encourage people to live healthier lifestyles only work in the longer term when they are designed to stop negative behaviour, rather than promote positive choices, suggests new research undertaken by Dr Matteo M Galizzi and Professor Paul Dolan.

Research Highlights: Being a parent – before and after a split

Dads who are actively involved in bringing up their young children are more likely, in the event of a split from their partner, to keep in regular contact with their child, according to new research by Professor Lucinda Platt from the Department of Social Policy.

Research Highlights:   Can't help falling in love? Why divorce and separation might not be that bad for your health

Middle-aged men and women who have experienced the upheaval of separation, divorce and remarriage are almost as healthy as couples in stable marriages, according to a new study involving Professor Emily Grundy.

Research Highlights: Primary health care should play bigger role in treating chronic kidney disease

Healthy eating, regular exercise and blood pressure and cholesterol control are among the most effective ways of managing the early stages of chronic kidney disease (CKD).

These are the findings of a review undertaken by Olivier J. Wouters, a doctoral candidate in Social Policy and research associate at LSE Health and Dr Panos Kanavos from LSE Health published in Nature Reviews Nephrology.

The article analysed which interventions are most effective for CKD in the early stages. It also explored what the optimum time is to provide clinical care for patients with early-stage CKD and what model of care is most suitable for these patients.

Professor Anne West at the International Comparisons Conference in Paris on 4th and 5th June

Professor Anne West gave two plenary presentations at the International Comparisons Conference in Paris on 4th and 5th June. The Conference focused on social and ethnic mixing in schools and included contributions by academics from a wide
range of countries including Canada, the US, Belgium, the Netherlands, Sweden and England.

Department of Social Policy Public Lecture

Misbehaving: the making of behavioural economics

Speaking about his latest book Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioural Economics, Richard Thaler coupled recent discoveries in human psychology with a practical understanding of incentives and market behaviour. Thaler explained how to make smarter decisions in an increasingly mystifying world, revealing how behavioural economic analysis opens up new ways to look at everything.

Research Highlights: Zambia urged to tackle the stigma of abortion and unwanted pregnancies

Despite safe abortions being legal in a very wide number of circumstances since 1972, women in Zambia continue to take unnecessary risks to end unwanted pregnancies.

A new study by LSE researchers Dr Ernestina Coast, Dr Emily Freeman and Dr Tiziana Leone, along with colleagues from the University of Zambia and Kings College London, sheds some light on this paradox.

Research Funding News

Dr Ernestina Coast and Dr Emily Freeman have been awarded £30,000 by the LSE RIIF to study unsafe abortion in rural Zambia and practices of conscientious objection by medical practitioners.

This successful funding bid develops out of an on-going research project into unsafe abortion in Zambia funded by ESRC-DFID.

LSE Student Led Teaching Excellence Awards 2015

Dr Arjan Gjonca has been highly commended for the Award for Excellent Welfare and Pastoral Support. 

LSE Class Teacher Awards 2015

Diana Quirmbach, Dr Bert Provan and Liz Bailey have received Class Teacher Awards. These awards are nominated by academic departments in regognition of the special contribution made by graduate teaching assistants, teaching fellows and guests teachers to their work.

Professor Stephen Jenkins and Professor Lucinda Platt at the Trento Festival of Economics

On Monday 1 June Professor Stephen Jenkins and Professor Lucinda Platt gave lectures at the Trento Festival of Economics, which this year had Social Mobility as its theme.

Professor Jenkins gave a talk onWhat’s happening to social mobility, and why do we care?

Professor Platt discussed Is social mobility greater among children of immigrants?

Research Funding News 

Professor Anne West has been awarded a grant from the Nuffield Foundation to explore the public funding of early years education in England. The first part of the project will involve an analysis of government policy on the funding of free early education, along with an analysis of expenditure.  The second part will explore how the funding formula for free early education has been developed and implemented in a sample of local authorities with different levels of deprivation, political complexions and constellations of providers. The research will be carried out by Professor Anne West, Dr Philip Noden, Dr Jonathan Roberts and Audrey Hind.

Honesty trumps political loyalty in lost wallet experiment

People are just as likely to return a ‘lost’ wallet to an owner who has a different political affiliation to their own suggests new research by Professor Paul Dolan.

LSE Research News- Professor Martin Knapp awarded funding

Professor Martin Knapp from PSSRU, has received funding from the Shirley Foundation to conduct research to examine the economic case for interventions for people with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). The project will feed evidence to the recently launched National Autism Project (NAP), a new national project looking at how we address the costs involved in supporting people with autism.

New Research Impact Case Study- Creating incentives to improve public services

Innovative policy ideas from Professor Sir Julian Le Grand, Richard Titmuss Professor of Social Policy, and LSE researchers inspired radical government reforms that introduced choice and competition to improve key public services.

Department of Social Policy Public Lecture

The Government Paternalist: nanny state or helpful friend?

Should governments save people from themselves? If someone smokes, drinks, takes hard drugs, or tries to assist in a friend's suicide, does the government have the right to intervene? If so, how?

During this lecture, Professor Sir Julian Le Grand offered answers to these questions-amoung the most socially important of our age.

Fundraising Event

Stuttering into Happiness- An evening with Professor Paul Dolan

Professor Paul Dolan hosted an engaging fundraising evening providing some key insights into how the role of attention can play a huge part in living with a stammer.

Paul was joined by Elaine Kelman who runs the Michael Palin Centre where Paul had some transformatory therapy. The Centre is supported by Action for Stammering Children, who along with the British Stammering Association, will benefit from the proceeds from the ticket sales.

Members of Department presented research at this year's  Population Association of America's Annual Meeting

The Population Association of America (PAA) is a non-profit, professional organisation that promotes research on population issues. The PAA Annual Meeting is the largest annual research conference on population, with hundreds of presentation and posters on population research.

Nine members of the Department of Social Policy presented their research at this year's  Annual Meeting in San Diego, California. They included Dr Barclay, Ms Batyra, Dr Coast, Dr Goisis, Professor Grundy, Dr Herman, Ms Mariani, Professor Myrskyla, Professor Platt and Ms Vaisanen. 

Less able, better off kids more likely to become high earners than bright poor kids

New research, conducted by CASE's Dr Abigail McKnight for the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission, has exposed the reality of a glass floor in British society that protects less-able better-off children from falling down the social ladder as they become adults.

Thousands miss out on palliative care due to unfair health system

The UK’s palliative care system needs a major overhaul, according to an LSE report, which reveals widespread inequities and a lack of services for non-cancer patients.

Terminally ill patients with illnesses other than cancer; people aged over 85 years; black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) groups; and people living in socially deprived areas are all missing out on important palliative care services, the report from the LSE PSSRU shows. Read more here.

No such thing as an empty nest when it comes to graduates

An LSE study looking at the relationship between parents and their adult children returning to live at home after university has revealed mixed experiences.

Parents are usually more negative then their children, many of whom are unaware of their parents' dissatisfaction, according to the researchers from  the  Families and Children Research Group (Professor Jane Lewis, Professor Anne West, Dr Philip Noden and Dr Jonathan Roberts) who led the study.

LSE Research News- Professor Elias Mossialos awarded funding

Professor Elias Mossialos,  LSE Health and Social Care, has received funding of £25,000 from the Commonwealth Fund to undertake a project to outline methodological considerations in performing international comparisons on medical device prices; compare price levels of hospital services across a selection of high-income countries; demonstrate the economic implications of substituting new brand name cancer drugs with equally effective older alternatives; and explore the prices and use rates for generic cardiovascular drugs. 

LSE Research News- Dr David McDaid awarded funding

David McDaid, Personal Social Services Research Unit, has been awarded £11,200 by the University of Cape Town to participate in the DFID-funded Programme for Improving Mental Health Care (PRIME). The project will model the economic consequences of maternal mental health interventions for mothers and their dependent children in low and middle-income countries. 

Shining example of UK research

Reading the Riots, a study by LSE and the Guardian  newspaper to examine the causes and consequences of the 2011 London riots, has been picked as one of the "shining examples of UK research" by the journal Nature.

Professor Tim Newburn and his team carried out hundreds of interviews with rioters, residents, lawyers and police. Rioters had concerns about aggressive policing, particularly the use of 'stop and search' policies, which were felt to unfairly target particular groups.

 Welfare reforms failing to move social housing tenants into work, according to new LSE research

The Coalition Government's radical welfare reforms have resulted in very few social housing tenants being able to find jobs despite their aim of moving people dependent on benefits into work, according to a new LSE report.

A team led by Anne Power, Professor of Social Policy at LSE, carried out two rounds of interviews with 200 tenants in the South West of England covering big cities, coastal towns, villages and tourist centres over a two-year period to find out how the reforms are playing out in low-income communities across the UK. The report, Is Welfare working?, provides unique evidence about how tenants and social landlords are coping under the financial pressures of welfare reform.

LSE Health and Social Care announced new blog

The blog features posts from staff, students and affiliates with LSE Health and Social Care based on recent and current research within the centre.

ARMA Awards- Professor Tim Newburn nominated in the Impact category

Professor Tim Newburn is a finalist in the Impact category of the ARMA awards, which "celebrates a research manager or research management team that has invented, innovated or transformed the processes for supporting the translation of research into societal impact". He was nominated for his collaboration with the Guardian on a project called Reading the Riots.

The ARMA prize rewards best practice in influencing the development of the research professions. The winners will be announced at the ARMA awards dinner in Brighton on Tuesday 02 June. 

Unequal legacy of crisis leaves young with economic mountain to climb, according to new LSE report

People in their twenties have been the worst affected by the economic crisis despite higher qualifications than any earlier generation, according to a comprehensive LSE analysis of what has happened to inequalities in qualifications, employment, pay, incomes and wealth since 2007.

The research, led by Professor Sir John Hills, shows that those in their twenties and early thirties have been hardest hit by far than any other group, with the greatest drop in full-time employment, largest rises in unemployment, and greatest falls in real wages

Dr Leonidas Cheliotis awarded Outstanding Critical Criminal Justice Scholar Award

Dr Cheliotis, Assistant Professor of Criminology at the Department of Social Policy, has been selected for the 2015 Outstanding Critical Criminal Justice Scholar Award by the American Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences (Critical Criminal Justice Section). Dr Cheliotis won the award 'for distinguished accomplishments in critical criminal justice scholarship across the most recent two-year period'.  Dr Cheliotis' most recent research has helped to advance criminological knowledge about the relationship between neoliberal capitalism and state and public punitiveness, paying particular attention to such issues as the origins of middle-class punitiveness, levels and patterns of punishment in post-authoritarian societies, and the politics of crime, conventional imprisonment and immigration detention amidst conditions of economic downturn.

On 5 March, Dr Cheliotis gave an invited talk at a conference entitled 'A History of Penal Regimes in Global Perspective, 1800-2015', organised by the Weatherhead Initiative on Global History at Harvard University's Weatherhead Center for International Affairs. Dr Cheliotis' talk focused on the relationship between penal policy and democratic state-building in the context of 19th-century Greece.

Professor Lucinda Platt participates in workshop on 'Reducing Inequality: What American' Scholarship Can Learn from the European Experience'

A group of US and European scholars met at Marbach Castle to discuss the pressing subject of inequality across society and between different groups and how it might be addressed. Jointly funded by the William T. Grant Foundation and the Jacobs Foundation , the workshop participants discussed commissioned papers covering the state of inequality in the US across five areas of overall inequality, immigration, mental health, education and criminal justice, with a particular focus on youth inequality.

Key European scholars in the respective fields have provided  discussion papers on these five topics illumination the European perspective, with Professor Lucinda Platt from the Social Policy Department providing a discussion paper on immigrant inequalities.

LSE Works: CASE Public Lecture

Changing Patterns of Inequality in the UK

Speakers: Professor Sir John Hills, Dr Polly Vizard
Chair: Bharat Mehta

Members of LSE's CASE presented new findings on the ways in which patterns of economic inequality changed in the UK over the economic crisis 2007-13.

High rise estates can work if they are made energy efficient, says new LSE report

LSE Housing and Communities, in partnership with Rockwool, launched High Rise Hope Revisited, a new report examining the social implications of whole building energy efficiency refurbishments in residential tower blocks.

Department of Social Policy Literary Festival Discussion
Global Development and Modern Fiction

Zia Haider Rahman, whose debut novel In The Light Of What We Know was described by The Guardian “as an exploration of the post-9/11 world that is both personal and political, epic and intensely moving”, talked to Professor David Lewis about its themes, including identity, the workings of the global development industry, and the place of Bangladesh in the world.

This event formed part of the LSE Space for Thought Literary Festival 2015. with the theme 'Foundations'.

Department of Social Policy/PSSRU LSE Literary Festival Discussion

Perceptions of Madness: understanding mental illness through art, literature and drama

Professor Martin Knapp chaired this panel discussion which explored how presentations of mental illness can affect public understanding of mental ill health with insights from research and personal experiences.

This event formed part of the LSE Space for Thought Literary Festival 2015, with the theme 'Foundations'.

'Nurture' more important than 'nature' for overweight children

Parents’ lifestyles, rather than their genes, are primarily responsible for their children being overweight according to research by the Centre for Economic Performance, based at LSE.

Department of Social Policy Public Lecture 

How Good We Can Be: ending the mercenary society and building a great country

Will Hutton gave a compelling and insightful lecture that examined the state of Britain today. 
Chair: Professor Sir John Hills

Coalition kept its promise to protect spending on schools, according to new report

The Coalition government kept its promise to protect spending on schools, according to a new report from LSE's Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion (CASE).

Youngest children and poorer households worst hit by Coalition's selective cuts, according to major new report

Poorer groups have been worst affected by changes to direct taxes, benefits and tax credits despite the Coalition's promise that the rich would carry the burden of austerity, according to a major new report from LSE and the Universities of Manchester and York. As a result, poverty has been increasing and will get worse in the next five years.

Dr Hakan Seckinelgin appointed new Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Civil Society

Dr Hakan Seckinelgin, Associate Professor in International Social Policy, is the new Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Civil Society.

The journal, which is published four times a year, has multidisciplinary focus that is interested in theoretical and empirical research on civil societies, their development and their interactions with the broader local and global societal processes.

Hakan Seckinelgin is also a visiting research fellow at CERI, Science Po in Paris from January to June 2015.

Family beliefs a barrier to aged care health reform

New research by Dr Joan Costa-i-Font shows that older people are avoiding taking out long-term care insurance, fearing their children will desert them in old age.

LSE Research News- Professor Stephen Jenkins awarded funding 

Professor Stephen Jenkins, Social Policy, was awarded funding of £59,082 through the University of Essex’s ESRC-funded Research Centre for Micro-Social Change (MiSoC). The research aims to point to ways in which our society can navigate the post-war transition from solidarity built on a sense of common purpose to the integration of people with diverse backgrounds, preferences and abilities in an era of new pressures.

LSE Research News- Professor Anne Power awarded funding

Professor Anne Power, LSE Housing, was awarded funding of £30,817 from Street Games UK Ltd to undertake a study to uncover how poverty impacts on young people, how this interacts with access to sport and how these barriers can be overcome.

Professor David Lewis speaks at Wilson Center

To Avoid Reinforcing Status Quo, Focus on Understanding Livelihood Systems

Leonidas Cheliotis has won the 2014 Best Public Intellectual Special Issue Award

Leonidas Cheliotis, Assistant Professor in Criminology in the Department of Social Policy, has won the 2014 best Public Intellectual Special Issue Award by the US Council of Editors of Learned Journals, Modern Language Association (MLA). Dr Cheliotis won the award for his guest-edited special issue of the prestigious centenarian journal South Atlantic Quarterly (published by Duke University Press) on 'Prison Realities: Views from Around the World'. The collection explores power and resistance under extreme conditions of confinement in a range of jurisdictions and from a variety of disciplinary perspectives. Dr Cheliotis’ own contribution to the collection discusses the uses and abuses of temporary release in a Greek male prison. 

New Year Honours at LSE - Professor Julian Le Grand has been awarded a knighthood

Professor Julian Le Grand has been awarded a knighthood for services to social science and public service.

Julian Le Grand has been the Richard Titmuss Professor of Social Policy at the London School of Economics and Political Science since 1993.

Read more here

LSE's Department of Social Policy excels in the REF again

LSE's Department of Social Policy has excelled once again in the REF, the UK's most recent nationwide assessment of research quality, impact and environment, which is undertaken every six to seven years. The results published last week show that LSE Social Policy is the UK's number one department for world leading and internationally excellent research.

The REF assessment takes place according to a quality scale from 1* to 4*, with 4* representing world leading research quality. In REF 2014 LSE's Department of Social Policy had the highest percentage (94%) of world leading 4* and internationally excellent 3* publications of any UK institution. It also had the highest possible scores (100%) for research impact and environment.

In the overall ranking, aggregating scores for research outputs, impact of research on policy, and academic environment LSE Social Policy was placed second in the country league table. When adjusted to take account of the percentage of staff submitted to REF, LSE Social Policy is by some distance the number one UK Social Policy Department for overall quality research.

Congratulations to everyone in the Department of Social Policy for an outstanding set of results.

More generous state unemployment benefits may protect the health of unemployed men

Men who lose their job in US states that provide generous unemployment benefits are at lower risk of poor health, according to research led by Jonathan Cylus, a Research Fellow at LSE Health and the European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies and a PhD candidate in the Department of Social Policy.

LSE study shows sharp rise in teenage childbearing during Iraq War

A new study by Valeria Cetorelli, an LSE PhD candidate in demography in the Department of Social Policy, shows that teenage fertility in Iraq rose by more than 30 per cent between 2003 and 2010 due to increased early marriage among less-educated girls.

Read more here

Professor Anne Power in LSE Connect, LSE's alumni magazine: Hunger pains: rise of the food bank

Anne Power, Professor of Social Policy and Head of LSE Housing and Communities, argues that due to falling incomes, harsh government cuts and the continuing rise in the cost of basic living, an increasing number of families across the UK are caught in a new poverty trap and the growing need for food banks is just the tip of the iceberg.

Professor David Lewis a speaker at the Wilson Center's panel event

Professor David Lewis, Head of the Department of Social Policy, was a speaker at the Wilson Center's panel event on 'Living Through Extremes: Building Livelihood Resilience Across Sectors and Countries', held in Washington DC on Thursday December 4th, 2014.

Read more here

Millennium Cohort Study: Initial findings from the Age 11 study published

The Millennium Cohort Study, edited by Professor Lucinda Platt was published on Friday 28th November. Lucinda Platt was PI of the Millennium Cohort Study before joining the LSE and oversaw the data collection and data release for the age 11 survey, as well as editing this volume of initial findings across six topic areas.
The first five surveys of the study- at ages 9 months and 3. 5. 7 and 11 years- have built up a uniquely detailed portrait of the children of the new century. The study has collected information on diverse aspects of their lives, including behaviour, cognitive development, health, schooling, housing and parents' employment and education. The Initial Findings draw on the new information collected in the Age 11 survey, covering 13,287 children and their families, alongside analysis of how the children have developed over time across the previous four surveys. The initial findings have been covered widely in the print and broadcast media

Read more here

Professor Eileen Munro awarded the President's Medal of the Operational Research Society

On Wednesday 26th November, Professor Eileen Munro of the Department of Social Policy, received the President's Medal of the Operational Research Society.

The honour, which was shared with Professor David Lane, Henley Business School, and Elke Husemann, was for their use of a range of systems thinking approaches in the Munro Review of Child Protection - a high-profile review of state-managed child protection activities in England, conducted for the Department for Education.
The judging panel explained: "Using systems thinking and casual loop diagrams, the work addressed a vital area of public policy and had a major influence on the recommendations of the Munro Review. That influence continues through on-going changes in government policy for child protection. The work was therefore judged a worthy winner of the President's Medal for 2014".

Professor Tony Barnett is leading a United Nations Study on the Socio-Economics Impact of Ebola Outbreak in West Africa

Professor Tony Barnett, now at the LSHTM but still engaged with the LSE, is leading a United Nations Study on the Socio-Economic Impact of Ebola outbreak in West Africa. He is also a recipient of a grant from the BBSRC/DFID/ESRC to research- together with Professor Dirk Pfeiffer and Dr Guillaume Fournier from the Royal Veterinary College- the relationship between avian influenza transmission, risk of zoonotic transfer, and the structure of live bird markets in Bangladesh.

Stand tall if you are living in a democracy

Men growing up in a democracy are likely to be taller than those who spend the first 20 years of their lives in a communist regime.
The link between democracy and stature is related to good nutrition, high disposable income and a life free of social and political constraints, according to new findings from the London School of Economics and Political Science.

In a study of Czech Republic and Slovakian residents since the dissolution of the communist regime in 1989, LSE political economist  Dr Joan Costa-Font and colleague Dr  Lucia Kossarova found clear height differences between the two regimes.

LSE Research News: Poor lose, and rich gain from direct tax and benefit changes since May 2010- without cutting the deficit

New analysis from LSE and the University of Essex shows that the poorest groups lost the biggest share of their incomes on average, and those in the bottom half of incomes lost overall, following benefit and direct tax changes since the 2010 election.

The research, co-authored by Professor John Hills, suggests that who has gained or lost most as a result of the Coalition's policy changes depends critically on when reforms are measured from.

Advance-HTA project's interim results presented in Mexico

Dr Panos Kanavos, deputy director at LSE Health, Department of Social Policy and Aris Angelis, PhD fellow, Department of Social Policy, presented Advance-HTA project’s interim results together with other partners of the project at a two-day Capacity Building workshop in Mexico City, on Thursday 6 and Friday 7 of November. Over 70 Health Technology Assessment (HTA) experts and decision makers of ministerial and academic affiliation attended the workshop, coming from all over the Latin America region with countries including Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Ecuador, El Salvador, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru, Trinidad and Tobago and Uruguay.

Advance-HTA is a research project funded by the European Commission's Research Framework Programme (FP7). It comprises several complementary streams of research that aim to advance and strengthen the methodological tools and practices relating to the application and implementation of HTA. It is a partnership of 13 Consortium members led by the Medical Technology Research Group, LSE Health. More information can be found at  http://www.advance-hta.eu/.

LSE Research News: Ethical Dilemmas of vaccination

How relevant are gender and age when making policies  about vaccination and does this leave governments open to claims of discrimination? 

Dr Jeroen Luyten, Fellow in Health Economics and Health Policy, discusses the moral and ethical issues in vaccination policy.

Department of Social Policy Public Lecture: Good Times Bad Times: the welfare myth of them and us

Speaker: Professor Sir John Hills
Respondents: Polly Toynbee, Professor Holly Sutherland
Chair: Professor Julian Le Grand

This ground-breaking book Good Times Bad Times: the welfare myth of them and us  challenges the idea of a divide in the UK population between those who benefit from the welfare state and those who pay into it.

John Hills is Director of the Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion (CASE) at LSE.
Polly Toynbee  is a political and social commentator for the Guardian. 
Holly Sutherland is a Director of EUROMOD, ISER at the University of Essex.
Julian Le Grand is the Richard Titmuss Professor of Social Policy at LSE.

Listen to the Podcast here

Dr Leonidas Cheliotis launches report at the Southbank Centre

On 3 November at the Southbank Centre in London,
Dr Leonidas Cheliotis launched the report of a long-term multi-method evaluation study he led on the process and effectiveness of an arts-based mentoring scheme for former prisoners, run by the Koestler Trust with funding from the Paul Hamlyn Foundation. The study found that arts mentoring can make indirect but significant contributions to desistance from crime, but also that arts-based programme provision needs to be extended as well as combined with cognate and complementary services to this end. Panel debate included Professor Alison Liebling (Cambridge Institute of Criminology), Michael Spurr (Chief Executive, National Offender Management Service), Tom Wylie (Chief Executive, Paul Hamlyn Foundation), and Dame Anne Owers (Chair of the Koestler Trust; Head of the Independent Police Complaints Commission).

To view the report click here (PDF)
To view the accompanying film click here

LSE Research News: Does having children make us any happier?

The birth of a first and a second child briefly increases the level of their parents’ happiness, but a third does not, according to new research from LSE and Western University, Canada.
Mikko Myrskylä, Professor of demography at LSE and Director of the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Rostock, Germany, said: “Our results show a temporary and transitory gain in parents’ happiness around the birth of first and second children." Read more here.

Dr Armine Ishkanian an invited expert and speaker at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation

From 13th-14th October, Dr Armine Ishkanian was an invited expert at the "Armenians 2115" seminar hosted by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon. She presented a paper titled "Where is Armenia heading?" at the high-level forum where forward-looking strategic discussions about Armenia's future development took place in a private, invitation-only environment.

School can worsen disabled children's behavioural problems, researchers say

A study from LSE and the Institute of Education, University of London, has found that the behavioural problems of many disabled children worsen between the ages of 3 and 7. They encounter increasing difficulties in terms of hyperactivity, emotional problems and getting on with other children.

However, disabled children might have fewer behavioural issues in their early years if more schools introduced stringent anti-bullying measures and other support strategies, the researchers claim.

Lucinda Platt, Professor of Social Policy and Sociology at LSE, is the lead author of the paper. 

LSE Research News: Sex and fertility versus health in AIDS stricken Africa

How do you reconcile the basic sexual and fertility needs of 25 million Africans with the stark reality of HIV/AIDS? The impact is devastating and extends way beyond a health crisis, with far reaching effects on the African workforce, family, education system and the economy in general.

Dr Ernestina Coast has been researching this topic with funding from the Wellcome Trust.

 Department of Social Policy Public Lecture: Happiness by Design
Speaker: Professor Paul Dolan

Chair: Professor Elaine Fox On the 22nd October, in the Old Theatre, Professor Paul Dolan gave a public lecture in which he defined happiness in terms of experiences of pleasure and purpose. He described how being happier means allocating attention more efficiently: towards those things that bring us pleasure and purpose and away from those that generate pain and pointlessness. Behavioural science tells us that most of what we do is not so much thought about; rather, it simply comes about. So by clever use of priming, defaults, commitments and social norms, you can become a whole lot happier without actually having to think very hard about it. You will be happier by design.

Paul Dolan is a Professor of Behavioural Science in the Department of Social Policy, and author of Happiness by Design: Finding Pleasure and Purpose in Everyday Life.
Elaine Fox is a Professor of Cognitive and Affective Psychology and Director of the Oxford Centre for Emotions and Affective Neuroscience.

Listen to the Podcast Here
View the YouTube webcast here

Department of Social Policy public conversation: Hand to Mouth: the truth about being poor in a wealthy world

Speaker: Linda Tirado
Chair: Rowan Harvey
Introduction by Dr Amanda Sheely

Linda Tirado knows from experience what it is to be poor, to struggle to make ends meet. She was working all hours at two jobs - as a food service worker in a chain restaurant and as a voting rights activist at a non-profit organization - to support her young family. She knows what it’s like to have problems you wish you could fix, but no money, energy or resources to fix them, and no hope of getting any.
In 2013, an essay on the everyday realities of poverty that Tirado wrote and posted online was read and shared around the world. In Hand to Mouth, she gives a searing, witty and clear-eyed insider account of being poor in the world’s richest nation. She looks at how ordinary people fall or are born into the poverty trap, explains why the poor don’t always behave in the way the middle classes think they should, and makes an urgent call for us all to understand and meet the challenges they face.

In this event, held on16th October 2014, Linda was in conversation with Rowan Harvey, Women's Rights Advocacy Adviser at Action Aid UK and LSE Governor. 

LSE Health and Africa Initiative research seminar: Practical and ethical dilemmas of working in the current Ebola crisis

Dr Benjamin Black, a London based obstetrics and gynaecology registrar, currently working for Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) as part of the Ebola response gave a talk on the Ebola crisis on 15th October 2014 at LSE. He has a special interest in humanitarian emergencies and their impact on the reproductive health of affected populations. From June to September, Benjamin undertook a mission with MSF in Sierra Leone, he will be returning for his next MSF mission in Sierra Leone next week. In this talk, Dr Black provided an insight to the ethical dilemmas of continuing normal health services within the context of an Ebola epidemic.

Dr Ernestina Coast chaired this event.

Dr Leonidas Cheliotis gives a lecture on the Political Economy of Punishment at the University of A Coruña.

On 19 September, Dr Leonidas Cheliotis, Assistant Professor in Criminology, gave a keynote lecture at an international two-day conference on 'The Political Economy of Punishment Today: Visions, Debates and Challenges', organised in A Coruña, Spain, by the Law School, University of A Coruña. Dr. Cheliotis' lecture focused on the relationship between globalisation, neoliberal capitalism and border control, drawing attention to the problematic nature of the concept of exclusion as a tool for describing and explaining state policies of border control.

Dementia costs the UK £26 billion a year

A new report which has been co-authored with The Alzheimer's Society, LSE and the King's College London has found that dementia costs the UK £26 billion a year - enough to pay the energy bills of every household in the country.

Professor Martin Knapp said ‘the cost of dementia is high, but the key question is what does that cost buy? We need to make sure that people with dementia and their carers get effective and cost-effective treatment, care and support.’

To download the full report, click here

Professor Martin Knapp awarded Fellowship at King's College London

Professor Martin Knapp (picture left with Paul McCrone) has been awarded a fellowship as an Honorary Professor of Health Economics at the Institute of Psychiatry at King's College London.  More

Rising prices, falling wages and welfare cuts- a recipe for debt in Newham.

Households in one of the poorest boroughs in London face crippling debt and financial pressures despite a widespread desire to work and an aversion to high cost lenders, according to a new report from LSE.

Professor Anne Power from the LSE Housing and Communities Unit, part of the Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion led the study.

Twins and short spaced births are linked to premature death among parents. Professor Emily Grundy discusses the implications of raising children close in age.

Mothers of twins and parents who have children in quick succession have a greater risk of dying prematurely, new research from LSE shows.

The findings, published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, suggest that the accumulated physical, emotional and financial stresses of raising children close in age could have long-term health implications. More

Dr Ernestina Coast presented findings of a systematic review on maternal and newborn health to the WHO in Geneva

Dr Ernestina Coast, a member of the Guideline Development Group for the World Health Organization's Technical Consultation on health promotion interventions for maternal and newborn health,  presented in Geneva 15-17th July 2014 the findings of a systematic review, led by herself and involving a team from the LSE including Eleri Jones and Sam Lattof. The systematic review addressed the question "What interventions to provide culturally-appropriate skilled maternity care lead to an increase in use of skilled maternity care before, during and after birth?"

Dr Armine Ishkanian at  International conference - 'United we stand? Alliances and conflicts between social democratic parties, trade unions, and social movements'

Dr Armine Ishkanian was the keynote speaker at an international conference titled “United we stand? Alliances and conflicts between social democratic parties, trade unions, and social movements” hosted by the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung in Berlin on 7 July. She presented findings from a Robert Bosch Stiftung funded research project titled Interpreting the Movements of 2011 – 2012.  The Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, which was established in 1925,  is the largest and oldest of the German party-associated foundations and has offices and projects in over 100 countries. All conference delegates were given printed copies of the report,  Reclaiming Democracy in the Square?  Interpreting the Movements of 2011-2012, that Dr Ishkanian co-wrote with Marlies Glasius (University of Amsterdam).

Professor Ian Craig reappointed as a Visiting Professor in Practice in the Department of Social Policy extended for a further three years

Ian is an ex-local authority Director of Children's Services and Chief Schools Adjudicator for England. He is also a Visiting Professor at the Institute of Education. His main interests are in basic/compulsory education and in school systems and structures. He has worked extensively abroad over many years, recently assisted Prof Anne West in research in Scandinavia, and advised the Governments of Pakistan and Rwanda on teacher certification and development.
He is very willing to offer his time and expertise to LSE colleagues and can be contacted at i.craig1@lse.ac.uk

Autism costs the UK £32 billion a year

Research led by Professor Martin Knapp has highlighted that autism costs the UK £32 billion a year; more than any other medical condition, and greater than cost of cancer, stroke and heart disease combined. Affecting more than 1% of the population, care for those affected can last for 60-70 years.

"Saving our Sanity" by Professor Martin Knapp

It is increasingly recognised across the world that intervening early in mental illness not only spares millions from untold misery but can save millions in finances. Professor Martin Knapp provides an overview of a field of study that could transform this century and in which LSE leads the way in the Summer 2014 edition of LSE Alumni's Connect magazine.

Department of Social Policy Centennial Lecture: Fault Lines and Silver Linings in the European Social Model(s)

On Wednesday 11th June 2014, Professor Anton Hemerijck gave the Department of Social Policy Centennial Lecture. He considered whether the aftermath of the 2008 global credit crunch marks a new opportunity to reconfigure and re-legitimise social policy and the European project. Read more here (pdf)

Anton Hemerijck is LSE Centennial Professor in the Department of Social Policy. Professor David Piachaud chaired this event, with invited commentators Dr Waltraud Schelkle and Professor David Soskice.

The podcast is now online.

Dr Ernestina Coast at an International workshop in Kenya on 'Decision-making regarding abortion'

Dr Ernestina Coast  was an invited participant at an international workshop in Kenya on 'Decision-making regarding abortion' from 3 - 5 June. She presented findings from an ESRC/DFID-funded research project 'Pregnancy termination trajectories in Zambia: the social and economic consequences for women'. This presentation was the first output of a new ESRC-funded grant for Impact Maximisation from ESRC/DFID’s Poverty Alleviation Research programme.

Dr Hakan Seckinelgin wins award for Inspirational Teaching at the 2014 LSE Student-Led Teaching Awards

Dr Hakan Seckinelgin, reader in International Social Policy, is one of the winners of the 2014 LSE Students' Union Student-Led Teaching Awards.

"What I learned in his class will stay with me for the rest of my life."
Hakan is commended for teaching with passion and encouraging everyone to engage with deep discussions. By combining knowledge of key course content with practical examples based on his own field experiences, Hakan creates an inspiring class atmosphere, encouraging students to challenge what they have already learned, really caring about the wellbeing of every individual and driving them to further their knowledge of the course and the wider world.

Professor Stephen Jenkins, new Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Economic Inequality

Stephen Jenkins, Professor of Economic and Social Policy, is the new Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Economic Inequality. He has also been appointed an Honorary Professorial Fellow of the Institute for Applied Economic and Social Research at the University of Melbourne. He has recently given invited lectures to the UK Department for Work and Pensions and the European Investment Bank, Luxembourg, about income mobility and poverty dynamics; to the Economic Policy series of the Centre for European Economic Research (ZEW), Mannheim, about state dependence in labour markets; and to the third Biannual Assisi Workshop on Economics and Institutions about the treatment of country-level effects in microeconometric analysis.

Book Launch Event: 'Popular Representations of Development: Insights from Novels, Films, Television and Social Media'

Edited by Professor David Lewis, Professor Dennis Rodgers and Professor Michael Woolcock.

The event took place on Monday 23rd  January. The editors gave presentations on the origins and ideas behind the book. Three of the contributors talked about aspects of their chapters. Simon Parker (University of York) on television series "The Wire" and the politics of urban underdevelopment in America, Tobias Denskus (Malmo University) on the MDG Summit and the limits of social media, and Uma Kothari (University of Manchester) on the Empire Marketing Board poster campaign 1926-33.

Richard Titmuss Annual Lecture- 'Richard Titmuss: forty years on'

On Wednesday 23rd October, Professor Howard Glennerster gave the Richard Titmuss Annual Lecture titled Richard Titmuss: forty years on. Richard Titmuss was one of the world's leading public analysts and philosophers. He was enormously influential in shaping post-war welfare state and created the discipline that we now call social policy. It is now forty years since he died. What would he have made of the present state of welfare? The present state of social policy? Welfare reformers frequently talk of going back to Beveridge. Should we not think of going back to Titmuss?

LSE Public Lecture and Launch of the report titled 'Reclaiming Democracy in the Square?: Interpreting the Movements of 2011-2012 ', By Armine Ishkanian and Marlies Glasius, with Irum S. Ali, took place on Thursday 10th October.

The speakers (Dr Heba Raouf Ezzat, Professor Marlies Glasius and Dr Armine Ishkanian) examined the recent pro-democracy and anti-austerity movements which have become sites for political action, resistance and solidarity. The considered the transnational diffusion, local specificities and the wider impact of protests on political and policy developments.

Symposium at the 2013 Annual Conference of the Social Policy Association to commemorate the fortieth anniversary of Richard Titmuss's death.

Symposium at the 2013 Annual Conference of the Social Policy Association to commemorate the fortieth anniversary of Richard Titmuss's death.The year 2013 marks the fortieth anniversary of Richard Titmuss's death. Rightly acknowledged as the principal founder of the discipline of social administration/social policy, Titmuss's period as the first Professor of Social Administration in the UK (1950-73), held at the London School of Economics, more or less coincided with the period of the 'classic' welfare state, which functioned in the socio-economic context of full employment, intact families and steady economic growth. Significantly, Titmuss's death (in April 1973) occurred some six months before the OPEC-led oil price rise which was to send shock waves through industrialised economies and usher in a long period of self-doubt and welfare state retrenchment. From his death onwards, the social policy agenda changed markedly.

To commemorate Titmuss's contribution to social policy, a symposium was held at the Annual Conference of the Social Policy Association at the University of Sheffield from the 9-11th July 2013. The symposium offered contrasting perspectives on Titmuss's achievements, not only examining them in the context of 1950-73, but also assessing the relevance of Titmuss's ideas for the very different social and economic circumstances of today.

Chaired by John Macnicol (Visiting Professor in the Department of Social Policy), the main presenters were Ann Oakley (Professor at the Institute of Education on 'Time Remembered: the Legend and the Legacy of Richard Titmuss'; Adrian Sinfield (Emeritus Professor at the University of Edinburgh) on 'Why Do We Need to Keep Reading Titmuss?'; and Robyn Rowe (PhD student at LSE) on 'Titmuss and the Dilemmas of Benefits for Women'

partment achieves Silver Sustainability Award

The Department was delighted to receive a Silver Award for Green Impact at the LSE's 2013 annual Celebration of Sustainability.