Department of Social Policy seminars

Wellbeing and Do-gooding? Critical understandings of individual altruism and human sociality 

Thursday 19th May 2022

Speaker: Professor Hartley Dean (Department of Social Policy, LSE)
Chair: Dr Timo Fleckenstein

Abstract: Drawing on recent and current work Hartley Dean will argue it is sociality, not altruism, that is axiomatic for the promotion of human wellbeing/species being. He will consider applications of the term altruism in relation to the emergence of the welfare state; the relevance of religious and philosophical influences; contributions from anthropological and scientific study; and insights from scholarly conceptualisations of fetishism, which suggest that altruism may be regarded as a fetishized representation of ‘sociality’ that obscure understandings of the essential social interdependence that characterises humanity as a species. He will argue for a humanistic switch of perspective within social policy. 

Video coming soon

Family Goals and Behavior in an International Comparative Analysis

Thursday 12th May 2022

Speaker: Dr Alicia Adserà (Princeton University)
Chair: Dr Berkay Ozcan

Abstract: We aim to understand how family goals/values impact family behavior (especially union formation and fertility). We designed a survey to collect information on family goals that includes novel vignettes of family profiles that individuals are asked to evaluate in terms of their “success” and desirability. Family profiles vary by marital status, children, family investments and interactions, educational aspirations and intra-household specialization. We use online panels in Italy, Korea, Norway, Singapore, Spain, Japan, China and the US. Many of these countries have some of the lowest fertility rates in the world, but very different institutional settings, and family formation processes (including nonmarital unions and childbearing). 

Forgotten Wives: an alternative history of LSE

Thursday 24 March 2022

Speaker: Professor Ann Oakley (UCL Social Research Institute)
Chair: Professor Lucinda Platt

Abstract: Ann Oakley’s new book Forgotten Wives: how women get written out of history is an account of four women who were married to well-known men in the social policy and welfare world of the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century. All of them had connections with the history of LSE, so the book throws new light on just how LSE managed to become the pre-eminent institution it is today. Reflecting on how historians have treated the work of wives highlights unsolved, and largely ignored, problems of biographical methodology.

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Diversity in Seminar and Study Groups and Student Outcomes: Evidence from SP401

Thursday 17 March 2022

Speakers: Dr Berkay Ozcan and Valentina Contreras (Department of Social Policy, LSE)
Chair: Dr Isabel Shutes (Department of Social Policy, LSE)

Abstract: We use data generated from a real-world experiment that randomly assigns students to study groups within a seminar to investigate the impact of diversity in a group's composition on a host of students' outcomes. We focus on two cohorts of LSE MSc students in the ISPP programme, who took the compulsory "SP401 Understanding Policy Research" module in the Michaelmas terms in 2020 and 2021. We exploit survey and administrative data describing the students' backgrounds, characteristics, expectations, and attitudes for our analyses and focus on the specific dimensions of diversity. We report findings from both descriptive and causal analyses. Finally, we discuss the potential implications of student composition in small study groups for student outcomes.

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The Contours of Political Manipulation: Inside Richard Nixon’s ‘Law and Order’ Campaign

Thursday 10 March 2022

Speaker: Dr Leonidas Cheliotis (Department of Social Policy, LSE)
Chair: Dr Johann Koehler (Department of Social Policy, LSE)

Abstract: With a view to contributing to an in-depth understanding of political engagement with public opinion about crime or cognate issues in the US (and beyond), this article dissects how Richard Nixon and his inner circle dealt with citizens’ views on what he collectively termed ‘law and order’. Based on novel data from heretofore ignored or otherwise underused archival sources, the article confirms a notion which prior works have asserted without sufficient evidence, dismissed as a conspiracy theory, or attempted to revise; namely, that Nixon sought to manipulate public opinion so as to serve his personal electoral agenda. In so doing, drawing inspiration from the work of political scientists James Druckman and Lawrence Jacobs, the article investigates four understudied themes and the ways in which they intersect: Whose views exactly did Nixon try to shape to his advantage? Which substantive dimension of public opinion did he attempt to mould? Which strategy did he use? And how effective were his efforts? It is shown that Nixon deployed divergent strategies and had only variable success in his attempts to have a different form of impact on the general public and specific sections of it, especially on blue-collar white immigrants from Europe who lived around Black urban ghettos.

Leaving Fathers Behind? The Politics of Departing from the Male Breadwinner Model in Germany and the UK

Thursday 3 March 2022

Speaker: Dr Sam Mohun-Himmelweit (Department of Social Policy, LSE)
Chair: Dr Timo Fleckenstein (Department of Social Policy, LSE)

Abstract: Since the late-1990s many OECD countries have reformed family policies, following the earlier Scandinavian example of expanding childcare and parental leave policies to enable families to better reconcile employment and care responsibilities. Yet the extent to which these ‘latecomer’ reformers have also followed the Scandinavian model of establishing leave for fathers is more varied. This presentation examines this variation through case studies of the politics of leave policy reform in two latecomer countries: Germany, which undertook a ‘Nordic turn’ in its policies for fathers, and the UK, where leave policy remains focused on mothers. Drawing on analysis of policy documents and interviews with policymakers, it argues that the interaction between political conditions and policy legacies led to an ideational shift regarding fathers in Germany, whereas the UK remained on a ‘maternalist’ trajectory.  

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PISA, Political Discourse, and Education Governance in the Age of Global Reference Societies

Thursday 24 February 2022

Speaker: Professor Louis Volante (Brock University)
Chair: Dr Berkay Ozcan (Department of Social Policy, LSE)

Abstract: Since the initial administration of the Program in International Student Assessment (PISA), governments around the world have increasingly turned their attention to the policy implications stemming from this global benchmark measure. Select educational jurisdictions, at various points in time, have been internationally lauded and touted as global reference societies by policymakers wishing to emulate their success. Yet, concerns remain regarding the undo influence and policy recommendations promoted by the OECD. This presentation explicates some of the dominant political narratives and sources of contestation attributed to PISA that have shaped global, transnational, and national education governance agendas. Overall, the discussion offers a critical analysis of the policy reach of the PISA survey. 

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Parental Skills, Assortative Mating, and the Incidence of Autism Spectrum Disorder

Thursday 10 February 2022

Speaker: Dr Chiara Orsini (University of Sheffield)
Chair: Dr Timo Fleckenstein (Department of Social Policy, LSE)

Abstract: We use rich administrative data from Denmark to assess medical theories that autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a heritable condition transmitted through underlying parental skills. Positing that occupational choices reflect skills, we create two separate occupation-based skill measures and find that these measures are associated with ASD incidence among children, especially through the father’s side. We also assess the empirical relevance of assortative mating based on skill, concluding that intertemporal changes in assortative mating explain little of the increase in ASD diagnoses in recent decades.

Video not available

Policy capacity matters for education reforms: A diverging tale of two Brazilian states

Thursday 3 February 2022

Speaker: Dr Yifei Yan (Department of Social Policy, LSE)
Chair: Dr Timo Fleckenstein (Department of Social Policy, LSE)

Abstract: It is increasingly recognized that various competencies are needed for education systems in the developing world to succeed in fulfilling Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG4). However, reform efforts are often hampered by a lack of conceptual clarity regarding what these competencies are and how they matter. This research fills the gap by developing a comprehensive conception of policy capacity to explain the education outcomes in two states in Brazil. Our most-similar case comparison reveals how variations in analytical, operational and political capacity are the differentiating factor behind their variegated reform effectiveness, thereby questioning the viability of copying policy interventions without considering their capacity underpinnings.

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Income source confusion using the SILC

Thursday 27 January 2022

Speaker: Dr Iva Tasseva (Department of Social Policy, LSE)
Chair: Dr Timo Fleckenstein (Department of Social Policy, LSE)

Abstract: We use a unique panel of household survey data – the Austrian SILC – which have been linked to individual administrative records on both state unemployment benefits and earnings. We assess the extent of misreporting across similar benefits and between benefits and earnings. We document that many respondents fail to report participation in one or more of the unemployment programmes. Moreover, they inflate earnings for periods when they are unemployed but are actually receiving unemployment compensation. We demonstrate the impact of this income source confusion on the extent to which education or job training lead to higher earnings. We find that estimates for the returns to education and training are substantially underestimated when using the survey data relative to the administrative data.

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The Schumpeterian consensus: the new logic of global social policy to face the fourth industrial revolution

Thursday 9 December 2021

Speaker: Dr Vicente Silva (Department of Social Policy, LSE)
Chair: Dr Kitty Stewart ((Department of Social Policy, LSE)

Abstract: The ‘future of work’ emerged as a central problem in global social governance in the past decade. Experts and policymakers from different positions argued for a redesign of the welfare state to let the fourth industrial revolution unleash. This study examines the engagement of international actors (ILO, OECD and IFIs) with the future of work agenda in the 2010s. It reveals that the antagonism between ‘economic’ and ‘social’ institutions from past decades has given way to a ‘Schumpeterian consensus’ in which the state is seen as a mediator between the creative and destructive potential of technological change – the ‘Schumpeterian social investment state’.

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Tracking system in education and inequalities.  A longitudinal analysis of two school reforms in Switzerland

Thursday 25 November 2021

Speaker: Professor Georges Felouzis (University of Geneva)
Chair: Dr Sonia Exley (Department of Social Policy, LSE)

Abstract: This seminar aims to examine the effects of different kinds of tracking on learning inequalities in compulsory education. In contrast to comprehensive school systems, the tracking consists of an early separation of pupils at school in different streams according to their level of learning. In many cases, the streams are hierarchized and provide different curriculum to the students. This separation — or orientation — can be effective at different level of schooling. In some country, like in Switzerland, the first orientation takes place at the end of primary school. After a review of the international literature on the effect of tracking, I present a longitudinal analysis of four cohorts of students educated in different tracking systems. The multilevel analysis shows that the most important factor to explain the effects of tracking in inequalities is the level of social and academic segregation.

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After Covid-19: what have we learned about the UK's labour market, inequality and the welfare system

Thursday 18 November 2021

Speaker: Dr Mike Brewer (Resolution Foundation)
Chair: Professor Lucinda Platt (Department of Social Policy, LSE)

Abstract: The Covid-19 pandemic saw a unprecedented labour market shock, and an unprecedented intervention from the UK government. Despite this, there have been profound impacts on the labour market,  which tended to exacerbate existing inequalities, and also had a strong intergenerational slant.  As we move into the recovery period, this talk draws on a series of Resolution Foundation analyses over the past 18 months to assess where the pandemic has left inequality in the UK, and what the prospects are for permanent change to our welfare system.

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Home Care Fault Lines: Understanding Tensions and Creating Alliances (book talk)

Thursday 11 November 2021

Speaker: Professor Cynthia Crawford (University of Toronto)
Chair: Dr Isabel Shutes (Department of Social Policy, LSE)

Abstract: Home care is a window into the complexity of inequality. In this talk, I focus on my recently published book Home Care Fault Lines: Understanding Tensions and Creating Alliances in which I argue that, in home care, understanding both tensions and the possibilities for alliances is essential for understanding, and challenging, inequalities. Several studies argue that alliances between home care workers, on the one hand, and older or disabled people who receive home care, on the other hand, are key to achieving both quality care services and quality work. Yet, my research shows that we also need to recognize and mediate tensions if alliances are going to be able to tackle structural fault lines reflecting complex inequalities. How can we arrange home care to minimize tensions and maximize alliances? I answer this question by comparing how four government-funded programs differ in the way they arrange home care. Focusing on the most personal in-home support, that is paid help with daily activities like bathing and eating, my analysis rests on over 300 interviews revealing how a variety of players shape the conditions of home care service and work in unique contexts. This talk will compare two of the cases illuminating the limits and possibilities of coalitions for flexibility with security in disability support. 

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The Positive Effect of Women’s Education on Fertility in Low-Fertility China

Thursday 4 November 2021

Speaker: Dr Shuang Chen (Department of Social Policy, LSE)
Char: Dr Timo Fleckenstein (Department of Social Policy, LSE)

Abstract: Despite pervasive evidence of more educated women having lower fertility, it remains unclear whether education reduces women’s fertility. This study investigates the causal effect of women’s education on fertility in China, where fertility has remained below the replacement level since the early 1990s. Exploiting the higher education expansion as exogenous sources of increase in women’s education, the study finds that each year of women’s education increases the number of children ever born by 10%. Two mechanisms drive the positive effect of education: education does not cause an increase in age at first marriage; among ever-married women, education increases their demand for children.

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SLEEPWALKING INTO THE ‘POST-RACIAL’: SOCIAL POLICY AND THE STUDY OF RACE

Thursday 7th October 2021

Seminar based on joint Paper by Professor Coretta Phillips (Department of Social Policy, LSE) and Professor Fiona Williams (University of Leeds)

Speaker: Professor Coretta Phillips (Department of Social Policy, LSE)
Chair: Dr Isabel Shutes (Department of Social Policy, LSE)

Abstract: In this paper we use Emirbayer and Desmond’s (2012, 2015) institutional reflexivity framework to critically examine the production of racial knowledge in British Social Policy. We focus principally on the disciplinary unconscious element of their three-tier framework, identifying and interrogating aspects of the discipline’s ‘obligatory problematics’, ‘habits of thought’, and ‘position-taking’ as well as its institutional structure and social relations that combine to render the discipline ‘institutionally white’. The final part of the paper considers how we can understand the complexities of race in our subject matter, avoiding its reduction to class and economic inequality, and facilitating the championing of intersectional theory and praxis.

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29 January 2020

‘Emplaced’ Indian Construction Labour-Camps: The Architecture of Discipline and the Limits to Collective Action.

Speaker: Dr Sunil Kumar

Speaker's bio:
Sunil Kumar, Social Policy, co-teaches on the MSc Social Policy and Development and is the sole convenor of a half-unit option entitled Urbanisation and Social Policy in the Global South. 

Read more here.

11th December 2019

Experimental Criminology and the Free-Rider Problem

Speakers: Dr Johann Koehler (LSE, Department of Social Policy) and Tobias Smith (UC-Berkeley)

Speakers' bios:
Johann Koehler is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Social Policy. Read more here.

Tobias Smith is a PhD Candidate in Jurisprudence and Social Policy at the University of California, Berkeley. He also holds a J.D. from Berkeley Law. His research focuses on the death penalty and punishment in China.

30th October 2019

Collaborative ethnography and its limitations: Researching young migrants in London

Speaker: Vanessa Hughes

Speaker's bio:
Vanessa Hughes is a LSE Fellow in Social policy since September 2019. Read more here.

13 March 2019

Challenging dominant social policy assumptions; an apprenticeship for young people with multiple problems and needs.

Speakers: Alice Sampson and Femi Ade-Davis

Speakers' bios:
Alice Sampson is a Research Associate at the Mannheim Centre for Crime and Criminology.  Her interests include researching crime prevention community-based initiatives in places with low incomes and high levels of violence. Alice has published in British Journal of Criminology, British Journal of Social Work and Youth Studies and her current research includes assessing the impact of violence reduction initiatives in Jamaica and South Africa.

Femi Ade-Davis is the project manager for Shoreditch Trust’s Blue Marble Training programme which engages with and supports young people with multiple barriers to social inclusion and independence. 

27 February 2019

Administrative Burden: Policymaking by Other Means

Speakers: Professor Pamela Herd and Professor Donald Moynihan

Speakers' bios:
Pamela Herd is a Professor of Public Policy at Georgetown University and is currently a Visiting Fellow at Nuffield College, University of Oxford.  Her research examines how social conditions, including social policies, influence inequality over the life course. She is also expert in survey research and biodemographic methods, serving as Principal Investigator of the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study and Chair for the Board of Overseers for the General Social Survey.

Donald Moynihan is the inaugural McCourt Chair at the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown University, and a Visiting Professor at Oxford University. Moynihan has presented his research on public sector performance to policymakers at the U.S. Office of Management and Budget, the World Bank and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. His work has also appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post and other media outlets.

30 January 2019

Towards a New Social Contract - Taking on Distributional Tensions in Europe and Central Asia

Speaker: Maurizio Bussolo

Speaker's bio
Maurizio Bussolo, lead economist at the World Bank, has been working on quantitative analyses of economic policy and development with research interests spanning both micro and macroeconomic topics. He has led operational teams in the aftermath of the 2008-09 crisis negotiating with Latin American LAC governments implementation of reforms to shield the most vulnerable. He previously worked at the OECD, at the Overseas Development Institute in London, and at Fedesarrollo and the Los Andes University in Colombia. He has extensively published in peer-reviewed journals on trade, growth, poverty and income distribution. He holds a PhD in economics from the University of Warwick.

31 October 2018

How useful is Gillian Hart's Distinction between 'Little d' and 'Big D' Development? Theoretical Reflections, a Case Study, and some Lessons for Social Policy

Speaker: Professor David Lewis, LSE

Speaker's bio
David Lewis is professor of social policy and development. His main research interests include international development policy, the role of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and civil society in social and public policy, and rural development in the Global South. More information.

16 May 2018

Health implications of Economic Insecurity

Speaker: Professor Lars Osberg

Speaker's bio:
Lars Osberg is currently McCulloch Professor of Economics at Dalhousie University, Halifax.  His current research emphasizes the implications of increasing inequality and the measurement, implications and determinants of economic insecurity, poverty and inequality of opportunity. Among other professional responsibilities, he was President of the Canadian Economics Association in 1999-2000.

7 March 2018

Police Reform and the Politics of Denial: An Academic's Journey into "Activism".

Speaker: Dr Michael Shiner, LSE

Speaker's bio
Michael Shiner is an Associate Professor in the Department of Social Policy. More information.

21 February 2018

Political Parties and Private Schools: A Comparative Analysis of Policy and Politics in England and Germany

Speaker: Dr Rita Nikolai, Humboldt University, Berlin

Speaker's bio
Rita Nikolai holds a Heisenberg fellowship, which is affiliated with the Institute for Education Studies at the Humboldt-University. Nikolais research focuses on education policy, theories of institutional change, and, more recently the private school development in liberal welfare states.

24 January 2018

The Kids Are Alright: The Rise in Non-Marital Births and Child Well-being

Speaker: Professor Christina Gibson-Davis, Duke University

Speaker's bio
Christina M. Gibson-Davis is an associate professor in the Sanford School of Public Policy, Duke University, with a secondary appointment in sociology. Her research interests center around social and economic differences in family formation patterns. Her current research focuses on the how divergent patterns of family formation affect economic inequality.

10 January 2018

The Politics of Post-Crisis European Social Spending

Speaker: Dr Ian McManus, LSE

Speaker's bio
Ian McManus is an LSE Fellow in the Department of Social Policy at the London School of Economics and Political Science. 

22 November 2017

Accumulation or Absorption? The Development of Household Non-Employment in Europe during the Great Recession

Speakers: Professor Bernhard Ebbinghaus, University of Oxford, Dr Thomas Biegert, LSE

Speakers' bios
Bernhard Ebbinghaus is Professor of Social Policy at the Department of Social Policy and Intervention at University of Oxford. His research focuses on advanced welfare states in Europe and overseas facing reform pressures due to ongoing globalization, demographic ageing and socio-economic changes.

Thomas Biegert is a Fellow in Social Policy at LSE. His main research interests are in welfare states and labour markets and how they shape social inequality and stratification. 
More information.

15 November 2017

Great Expectations: Long-term Poverty Reduction, Intergenerational Change and Young Beneficiaries’ Aspirations in Brazil’s Bolsa Família Programme

Speaker: Dr Hayley Jones, LSE

Speaker's bio
Hayley is an LSE Fellow in the Department of Social Policy, where she teaches international and comparative social policy and development and social policy.  Her background is in Development Studies, with a focus on social policy in Latin America. More information.

18 October 2017

Ethnic school composition and multiple ethnic identity formation of adolescents in the Netherlands

Speaker: Dr Gert-Jan Veerman, Ede Christian University of Applied Sciences

Speaker's bio
Gert-Jan M. Veerman was a primary school teacher for more than ten years in various Dutch primary schools. He holds a PhD in sociology from the University of Amsterdam. He currently is a lecturer at the Ede Christian University of Applied Sciences in the Netherlands and fellow at the College for Interdisciplinary Educational Research in Germany.

11 October 2017

Inter-ethnic relations of teenagers in England’s schools: the role of school and neighbourhood ethnic composition

Speaker: Professor Simon Burgess, University of Bristol

Speaker's bio 
Simon Burgess is a Professor of Economics in the Department of Economics, at the University of Bristol . Simon is also a Research Fellow at the Institute for the Study of Labor.  He is a labour economist, and for the last ten years or so his research interests have been in the economics of education. Read more.