I am a Professor of Social Policy at the School of Social Sciences at Cardiff University. My primary research interests are the conceptualisation and measurement of poverty and the analysis of social security policy and anti-poverty initiatives. I am the author of more than 40 journal articles, book chapters and research reports.
As of early 2025, I am working on three funded projects. The first is a Swiss-UK comparative study of the relationship between low-quality work, in-work poverty and subjective well-being. This study is being led by Prof. Eric Crettaz and has been funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation. You can read more about this study here. The second is a Nuffield Foundation-funded study of the growing role played by discretion and devolution in the UK’s social security system, led by Prof. Ruth Patrick (York). You can read about this project here. In the third, I am part of the team evaluating the Welsh Basic Income Pilot for Care Leavers, which is being led by Prof. Sally Holland and Dave Westlake at Cardiff University.
I am also undertaking a major piece of work about the evolution of poverty and living standards in Europe over the last two decades, examining the contribution played by social policy reforms, labour market and demographic trajectories to these trends. I anticipate this work will lead to a series of journal articles and to a monograph.
Between 2019 and 2022, I led an ESRC-funded study on the link between housing and poverty in a comparative European context and how this has evolved in the decade since the Great Recession. This was a interdisciplinary, comparative study conducted with Dr Marco Pomati (Cardiff) and Prof. Mark Stephens (University of Glasgow). The final outputs from this project have now been published.
If you would like to know more about these studies, or if you would like me to speak about these, please get in touch.