York announces key appointments in demography and social policy
Posted on 9 March 2004
Professor John Hobcraft is appointed to a Chair of Social Policy and Demography. Professor Hobcraft is an internationally-renowned demographer and social scientist. His major research areas cover the origins of adult social exclusion and the understanding of reproductive behaviour. His work has influenced national policies on childhood poverty and international policies on family planning. He has also been involved with policy formulation at the United Nations on reproductive health and women's rights.
He chairs the UNECE Gender and Generations Programme consortium board of European demographic institutes, is an elected member of Academia Europaea, and serves on the US National Academy of Sciences Committee on Population. He joins York from the London School of Economics, has recently been a visiting fellow at the Australian National University and is currently working at Princeton University in the US.
He said: "I am delighted to be joining York, which has such a strong history of social policy research. I strongly believe that social scientists need to engage with the behavioural and life sciences for real further progress to be made in understanding human behaviour. York's international excellence in the social sciences, in psychology, and in biology will provide a wonderful opportunity to advance this agenda, both in relation to understanding demographic behaviour and in exploring the origins of adult disadvantage."
Professor Kathleen Kiernan has been appointed to a Chair in Social Policy and Demography, also in the Department of Social Policy and Social Work.
Professor Kiernan is an internationally-recognised scholar in family demography. She has conducted research on a range of issues relating to family life including teenage parenthood, marriage, divorce, cohabitation, unmarried parenthood and lone parenthood. Much of her research uses longitudinal data from the British birth cohort studies as well as comparative data from a range of European countries and the USA.
She is Professor of Social Policy and Demography at the London School of Economics and a Co-Director of the ESRC Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion at the LSE. Currently she is a Visiting Research Scholar at the Centre for Health and Well-Being at Princeton University in the US.
Professor Kiernan said: "I am looking forward to joining and contributing to a department with a very strong record in research on children and families, and comparative research."
Professor Jonathan Bradshaw, Head of the Department of Social Policy and Social Work, said: "We are very excited that Professors Hobcraft and Kiernan are coming to York. Their research is at the cutting edge and they will contribute to establishing York as a national centre for research in social policy and demography."
Notes to editors:
- The Department of Social Policy and Social Work is one of the largest centres of social policy research in Europe.
- It embraces an inter-disciplinary approach that includes political science, sociology, criminology, economics, psychology, history, and philosophy
- It has a special reputation for research on poverty and social exclusion, social security, social care, housing policy, children in care, child well-being, family change and comparative social policy.