The 2021/22 CRESR Seminar Series ran from October 2021 - June 2022 and all the details relating to each seminar can be found below. If you have any queries relating to these, please contact us.

Steve Fothergill, Sheffield Hallam University

Download 'Levelling Up - Ten priorities for the Spending Review and White Paper' slides (PPTX, 230.7KB)

Abstract: The UK government’s Levelling Up agenda needs to shift from ill-defined aspiration to practical action. Steve Fothergill will set out Ten Priorities for the Spending Review and White Paper – the two key opportunities this autumn to shape policy for the rest of this parliament and beyond. The proposals draw heavily on the recent report Plan for the North: how to deliver the levelling up that’s really needed, co-authored with Tony Gore, which has been endorsed more than 40 Council Leaders and Elected Mayors across Yorkshire, the North East and North West.

Biography: Steve Fothergill is a Professor in the Centre for Regional Economic and Social Research (CRESR) at Sheffield Hallam University. An economist by background, he has written extensively over several decades on many aspects of UK urban and regional development. Outside academia, he is also National Director of the Industrial Communities Alliance, the all-party association of local authorities in the older industrial areas of England, Scotland and Wales, in which capacity he has been deeply involved in trying to influence the shape and direction of successive regional policies, including most recently the Levelling Up agenda.

Philip McCann, University of Sheffield

Download 'Levelling Up is Hard to Do: UK Regional Inequalities, Brexit and the Post Covid Challenges' slides (PDF, 451.8KB)

Biography: Professor Philip McCann is Professor of Urban and Regional Economics in the University of Sheffield Management School. Philip has been a Special Adviser to two European Commissioners for Regional and Urban Policy, and an advisor or consultant to four different directorates at the OECD Paris, the European Investment Bank, as well as government ministries and research institutes in several countries. He was Co-Director of the £2.28 million ESRC Productivity Insights Network+ research programme; a researcher with both UK in a Changing Europe and the ESRC Rebuilding Macroeconomics Network; and now the ‘Geography and Place’ Theme Leader in the ESRC-funded National Productivity Institute research programme. He is a member of the UK Government’s R&D Place Advisory Group chaired by Amanda Solloway MP, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State - Minister for Science, Research and Innovation. He is also a member of the National Infrastructure Commission’s Expert Advisory Panel on Levelling Up 2021-2023 as well as a member of the Assessment Panel of the UKRI SIPF Strength in Places Fund. Philip is the author of the 570-page book The UK Regional-National Economic Problem: Geography, Globalisation and Governance (2016 Routledge), the most detailed and comprehensive analysis of the UK regional problems ever undertaken in a single volume.

Malcolm Leitch, Glasgow City Council

Download 'The UK Government’s Levelling Up Agenda' slides (PPTX, 70.1KB)

Abstract: The intervention will draw on Malcolm’s experiences at operational level in trying to deliver “levelling up” in practical terms in the West of Scotland, contrasting past EU with current and proposed future UK and Scottish Government approaches to this topic. Some conclusions will be drawn regarding success factors for levelling up.

Biography: Malcolm Leitch is an Economic Development Manager with Glasgow City Council. Shortly after graduating from Strathclyde University in economics and politics he joined the then Strathclyde Regional Council where he worked in a variety of roles before taking a post in the council’s economic strategy unit. For the past 30 years he has specialised in EU regional and cohesion policy, in particular as it was and is delivered in Glasgow and the West of Scotland. This has covered a wide range of tasks including programme preparation and management, project bid writing, audit and compliance issues together with monitoring and evaluation.

The ESRC's Festival of Social Sciences is an annual, series of engagement events held across the UK, which celebrate research that helps us understand and shape the society we live in. During 2021, the festival was held from the 1st to 30th November with CRESR staff involved in one event (details are below). Further information is also available on the Festival of Social Science 2021 website.

Secrets of the nuclear power plant: weighing up the role of nuclear in our energy future

Aimee Ambrose, John Lindberg, Marilyn Smith and John Grant

Abstract

Nuclear energy is a controversial approach to energy generation and its future in a low carbon energy system is contested. New nuclear energy facilities are being built in the UK as we speak. Some argue that it offers the lowest carbon source of reliable, round the clock energy and the perfect complement to renewable energy which is condition dependent. Others point to high profile disasters and have major concerns about what happens to the nuclear waste generated in the process. This event is aimed at anyone who wants to find out more about nuclear energy and its potential role in a low carbon energy system. A virtual behind the scenes tour of a nuclear energy facility and a panel of experts with different stances on nuclear will guide participants through the main debates, equipping them with the facts to be able to make their own minds up about nuclear energy, its ethical and environmental implications. There will be opportunities for audience participation but equally participants are welcome to sit back and enjoy the tour and the debate, depending on their preference.

Download 'Making sense of the world' slides (PPTX, 3MB)

Abstract

The Other America: White Working Class Perspectives on Race, Identity and Change will provide an in depth account of the run up and after match of the 2016 US Presidential Campaign that led to the victory of Donald Trump. Based on in depth interviews with more than 250 people across five US cities who described themselves as white working class it gives a grassroots perspective of how people felt about themselves, politics and societal change. In this way it may help to point to deeper analysis on communities that have been framed in a reductionist and simplistic manner obscuring the reality of their lived experiences.

Biography

Harris Beider was appointed Head of the School of Social Sciences and Professor of Communities and Public Policy at Birmingham City University in April 2019 being responsible for learning, teaching and research delivered by 140 members of staff to +2500 students with five research centres. Previously he had been Director of Research Development and Professor of Community Cohesion at The Centre for Trust, Peace and Social Relations: Coventry University, and Senior Fellow at the Centre for Urban and Regional Studies at the University of Birmingham, working on housing, race and community engagement and was co-director of the Public Service MBA Programme for housing.

In 2014 and 2016, he was awarded a Visiting Professorship in the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University in the City of New York, teaching on graduate courses on race and public policy, urban studies and global perspectives on migration. He was nominated for the Columbia University Presidential Teaching Prize in 2017.As an academic, Beider has led multidisciplinary research teams in the UK as well as internationally and secured research funding from research councils and foundations based in the UK, US and EU including Open Society Foundations, Rockefeller Brothers Fund and ESRC. He has published widely including four books, the last publication being - The Other America - published by Policy Press/ University of Chicago Press which was nominated for the 2021 Komarovsky Book Prize.

Abstract

Continuously-escalating rates of youth unemployment have become endemic, normalised features of contemporary societies worldwide. How are we to make sense of this? Ross Fergusson and Nicola Yeates present from their new book, Global Youth Unemployment: History, governance and policy, which brings the dynamics of global governance and global financial crisis across up to 120 countries into explanations for youth unemployment and its associated harms. They present a selection of new evidence, data and analysis spanning the Global South as well as the Global North across a century, and call for robust multilateral responses on a global scale.

Biographies

Nicola Yeates, The Open University

Nicola Yeates is Professor of Social Policy in the Department of Social Policy and Criminology at The Open University, UK. She has taught and published widely on a range of matters in global social policy, notably regarding world-regional social policy, global migrations, and global health and social care labour forces.

Her work has been widely reprinted and translated. She was an editor-in-chief of the journal 'Global Social Policy' (2005–10), and is a member of its International Advisory Board. She is editor of 'Understanding global social policy', the third edition of which will be published in early 2022, and co-editor of 'The global social policy reader' (with Chris Holden, Policy Press, 2009). Her most recent research monographs are 'Global youth unemployment: History, governance, policy' (with Ross Fergusson, Edward Elgar, 2021) and 'International health worker migration and recruitment: Global governance, politics and policy' (with Jane Pillinger, Routledge, 2019).

Dr Ross Fergusson, The Open University

Ross Fergusson is Senior Lecturer in Social Policy at The Open University, UK. His research interests are in socially excluded young people, international youth unemployment and international governmental organisations, and the relationships between social policy and youth criminal justice. His recent books are 'Global Youth Unemployment: History, Governance and Policy' (with Nicola Yeates, Edward Elgar, 2021) and 'Young People, Welfare and Crime: Governing Non-Participation' (Policy Press, 2016). Other recent publications are ‘International Organizations’ Involvement in Youth Unemployment as a Global Policy Field and the Global Financial Crisis’, in K. Martens, D. Niemann and A. Kaasch (eds) ‘International Organizations in Global Social Governance’ (Palgrave Macmillan/Springer, 2021); Fergusson, R. (2022a, forthcoming) 'Young People, Antisocial Behavior and Unemployment: Towards a Trans-Disciplinary Analysis of Criminalization' in 'Critical Criminology: an International Journal'; and Fergusson, R. (2022a, forthcoming) ‘Global Youth Policy, Labour and (Un)employment’, in Yeates, N. and Holden, C. (eds.) (2022b) ‘Understanding Global Social Policy’ (3rd edition) Bristol University Press.

Abstract

Clean energy communities aim to promote renewable energy as well as energy efficiency. They are social networks and – given that community membership may involve the creation of a new social identity among members – they potentially offer a particularly conducive environment for social learning about energy conservation. Initial evidence suggests that involvement in energy communities may indeed encourage sustainable energy behaviours, yet field experimental evidence has been lacking so far. In this study, we investigate based on two field experiments whether membership in an energy community can increase the impact of behavioural interventions to reduce energy consumption or change energy consumption patterns in private households. The analysis involves a newly created energy community among customers of the Slovenian energy provider GEN-I. In the first experiment, we investigate the conservation effect of real-time feedback through smart showerheads, while in the second experiment, we explore participants’ reactions to a load shifting intervention. We find mixed evidence on whether the energy saving effects of behavioural interventions can be enhanced by applying them in the context of energy communities. While the first experiment did not reveal differences in the effect of real-time feedback between the energy community members and the other study participants, the second experiment resulted in a strong reduction of electricity use in peak hours for the energy community members, but only if they also experienced real-time feedback. Our results reinforce the importance of exploring the combination of different behavioural interventions.

Biography

Julia Blasch is an economist specialised in behavioral environmental economics. Since October 2021, she is a Professor of Environmental and Sustainable Economics at TH Ingolstadt in Germany, and also affiliated with the Institute for Environmental Studies (IVM) of Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VU) and the Centre for Energy Policy and Economics (CEPE) of ETH Zurich. Her research explores individual behavior related to climate change mitigation and adaptation, with a focus on residential energy efficiency, mainly based on survey data and experimental methods. Since 2019, Julia coordinates the Horizon 2020 project NEWCOMERS on the role of new clean energy communities in the energy transitions in Europe. She is also a Research Fellow at RWI Leibniz Institute for Economic Research Essen, which collaborates in the NEWCOMERS project.

Download 'Educating for ‘Public Good’: A critical exploration of how philanthropic citizenship is encouraged in primary education' slides (PPTX, 7.2MB)

Abstract

In this presentation I explore the problems and potential of cultivating children’s philanthropic citizenship in primary education. Embedded in ideas of social justice, compassion and active kindness, philanthropic citizenship is a dimension of citizenship behaviour associated with intentions and actions, such as volunteering, social action, charitable giving and activism, that intend to produce social and/or environmental benefit (Body & Lacny, 2022). I argue that a core principle of philanthropic citizenship learning moves beyond ideas of ‘charity’, instead embracing a ‘social justice mentality’ (Simpson, 2017), where children are encouraged to critically explore and engage with the wider issues which sit behind concepts of charity and giving (Body et al., 2021).

Engagement in charities, giving and volunteering is becoming increasingly mainstream in education. Indeed, research shows that schools often go to great lengths to encourage, support and engage children of all ages in charities and giving of time, talent and treasure, through fundraising, social and voluntary action opportunities, creating a strong enthusiasm for giving and supporting others (Body et al., 2020). However, our previous research suggests that children are rarely given the opportunities to meaningfully engage in giving decisions or indeed the causes behind the giving. Furthermore, through engagement with tokenistic fundraising mechanisms, where children for example are encouraged to give £1 for a reward such as a cup cake or to ‘dress up’, we teach giving as a transactional act, negating to support children to critically engage in the cause behind the giving, which is counter-intuitive to cultivating active, long-term philanthropic citizenship which seeks to consider positive, longer term social changes (Body et al., 2020). Thus concern is raised that by encouraging giving as a transactional act we risk overriding intrinsic altruistic behaviours with external rewards (Body et al., 2020). Additionally, Power and Taylor (2018) suggest the mainstreaming of charities in schools presents charities as the ‘solution’ to a range of social ills, such as child poverty, homelessness, animal welfare, and risks downplaying other approaches to address social inequality, including government responsibilities. Drawing together a range of mine and colleagues research studies exploring this topic and emerging themes from our associated three-year ESRC research project, I seek to present some of the dominant themes, opportunities, inconsistencies and inequalities in how children’s philanthropic citizenship is cultivated in primary school, and how these experiences can be shaped by social, economic and cultural factors, at micro, meso and macro levels.

Useful link: https://research.kent.ac.uk/children-as-philanthropic-citizens/

Biography

Alison Body is a Senior Lecturer with the Centre for Philanthropy at the University of Kent and the Director of their MA Philanthropic Studies programme. Before this she worked as a CEO of a leading children’s charity and a lead Commissioning Officer for early intervention services, where she was an advocate for children's rights and participation and has significant experience of working closely with voluntary sector organisations and funders to deliver essential services which achieve maximum impact for children, families and communities. Her research focuses on philanthropy, children and education, with a particular interest in how children experience philanthropy and develop philanthropic behaviours.

Anya Ahmed (Manchester Metropolitan University)

Title: Preventing prevention: how structural challenges impact homelessness services delivery

Abstract: Devolution presented an opportunity for the Welsh Government to introduce changes to housing and homelessness policy. Then homelessness reforms - centring on prevention - adopted and embodied in the Housing (Wales) Act 2014 have been hailed as one of the best examples of the Welsh Government using its powers. However, devolved governments in small countries face a number of challenges in terms of realising their housing policy ambitions. In this presentation I reflect on the inevitable dissonance between the policy behind the Welsh Government legislation (prevention) and practice (implementation) associated with structural challenges (for example austerity and budget restrictions, Welfare Reform and the availability of affordable accommodation).

Biography: I am a social scientist with over 25 years academic experience and previously worked as a housing practitioner, trainer, and consultant. I have led numerous funded projects focusing on the needs and experiences of less heard and marginalised communities, homelessness, and older people. Much of my work has involved interrogation of the theoretical, conceptual, and applied nature of ‘community’ in national and international contexts.

Alexandra Black, Chris Devany, and Vicky Heap (Sheffield Hallam University)

Title: The ‘policing’ of homelessness in England and Wales

Abstract: This research investigates the impact of anti-social behaviour tools and powers on street sleeping homeless people. With the threat of £100 Fixed Penalty Notices, being banned from specified geographical spaces, and subsequent criminalisation, these relatively new powers are a cause for concern. Our two-year project, funded by Oak Foundation, provides the first empirical evidence on how these expanded tools and powers are being experienced by and impact upon street sleeping homeless people. The research employs a mixed methods approach, consisting of; 52 semi-structured interviews/focus groups with street sleeping homeless people, 16 semi-structured interviews with stakeholders, and a survey of stakeholders to ascertain their views on these powers and the broad impacts of their use. The presentation will highlight early findings from the research and will also include a set of empirically driven policy recommendations. Ultimately, this timely piece of work aims to use the evidence base created to inform policy change and improve frontline practice.

Useful links: https://www.shu.ac.uk/news/all-articles/latest-news/asb-legislation-and-homeless-people?msclkid=d7fb965da6cc11ec978fb743b5802f11

Biographies

Alex Black is a Senior Lecturer in Criminology in the Law and Criminology Department at Sheffield Hallam University. Alex's recent work has focused the use of anti-social behaviour legislation to manage disorder, their impacts on marginalised groups and the distribution of powers across the policing family. She also has expertise in, and has published on, victimisation, policing of domestic abuse, emotional labour in policing, and the policing of public space.

Dr Chris Devany was awarded his PhD in 2021 for his thesis titled "Disengaged Youth? exploring the lives of 'hidden NEETs' Outside the Benefits System'. His research has exclusively focused on the intersection of socioeconomic vulnerabilities and social policy.

Dr Vicky Heap is a Reader in Criminology and Fellow of the Sheffield Institute for Policy Studies at Sheffield Hallam University. Her research interests lie in the areas of anti-social behaviour policy, victimology, and mixed methods research methodology.

Download 'Excess mortality in Glasgow: a ‘Glasgow Effect’ or just another political effect?' slides (PPTX, 12.5MB)

Abstract

The presentation will discuss the causes of the high levels of 'excess mortality' observed in Glasgow - a phenomenon often referred to in the media (arguably unhelpfully and meaninglessly) as a so-called 'Glasgow effect'. It will present the evidence in the context of other political effects on health that are currently highly visible across all parts of the UK.

Biography

David Walsh is a Public Health Programme Manager at the Glasgow Centre for Population Health (GCPH) in Glasgow, Scotland, where he has been in post since December 2006. He is also an Honorary Senior Lecturer at the University of Glasgow. Within GCPH, he is responsible for leading a number of different research programmes. This has included a large body of work aimed at understanding Scotland’s (and Glasgow’s) high levels of ‘excess’ mortality, studies of deindustrialisation and health across European regions, and a range of other topics relevant to health inequalities and their determinants in Scotland and the UK. Recently the latter has included topics as diverse as adverse as ethnicity and health, adverse early years environments, and the impact of government ‘austerity’ measures on mortality.

Useful links

• https://www.gcph.co.uk/population_health_trends/scottish_excess_mortality
• https://www.gcph.co.uk/people/42_david_walsh