Our core focus is on issues around social security, poverty and social citizenship, topics that have been a core focus of our work since our foundation in the 1960s.

We have expertise in a wide range of topics, key specialisms including poverty and inequality, welfare conditionality, welfare reform, public attitudes to welfare and lived experiences of welfare. Our work adopts both national and cross-national perspectives and spans a wide range of methodological approaches.

The £2 million ESRC-funded Welfare Conditionality: Sanctions Support and Behaviour Change (WelCond) research programme, has been the largest project, but a variety of funders have supported our work, including the Department for Work and Pensions; Nuffield Foundation, Forces in Mind Trust, Joseph Rowntree Foundation, and Shelter. 

Theme lead

Contact us

Peter Dwyer
Professor of Social Policy

peter.dwyer@york.ac.uk
+044 (0)1904 321229

Contact us

Peter Dwyer
Professor of Social Policy

peter.dwyer@york.ac.uk
+044 (0)1904 321229