Projects

Below you will find a selection of my work on funded research projects, as well as a sample of my publications on each theme. A complete list of my published research can be found on the Publications page – which includes links to open-access copies of my articles – or via my CV.

 

Balancing Social Care Priorities

Ageing populations, limited infrastructure and staffing shortages, and reduced government funding have all contributed to the long-running crisis in social care in the UK. Further complicating matters, the COVID-19 pandemic and its resulting fiscal challenges have increased public attention to social care while simultaneously decreasing government capacity to finance social programmes. As a result, existing trade-offs in long-term care policy are likely to become even more complex and contentious.

This two-year project – funded by the British Academy/Leverhulme Small Research Grant scheme (SRG23\231164) – investigates social care preferences under conditions of scarcity, looking at how citizens balance trade-offs across different policy dimensions (e.g., resource distribution, taxation, service provision).

The project thus tackles a question that has become central to UK public policy at present: how can governments manage the trade-off between the critical need for high-quality, equitable long-term social care provision and the high financial costs of these measures to citizens?

 

Preferences for Differentiated Representation

Equal representation is at the core of representative democracy, but are citizens actually in favour of it? Using original survey data, my research on this theme investigates when and why citizens believe that policy-affected individuals should have more or less influence than others.

This project was funded by the EU’s H2020 Programme via a Marie Curie Individual Fellowship (Grant Number 750556) and conducted out of the Utrecht University School of Governance.

My publications on this topic include research on:

• Attitudes toward targeted representation, with a focus on police reform
• Reactions to different representational approaches, with a focus on tax reform
• The impact of public consultations on blame attribution
• Factors shaping the preferred influence of those who stand to gain or lose from legislation

 

Universalism and the Welfare State

How committed are citizens to universalism, redistribution, and the welfare state, and what factors shape their commitment? Through working on the UNIWEL (Universalism and the Welfare State) project at Aarhus University’s Department of Political Science, I investigated various topics related to this theme – including via a novel survey that we fielded in the US and nine European countries.

My published work on the subject has examined:

• The motives citizens ascribe to their pro- and anti-redistribution compatriots
• The effects of welfare state universalism on immigrant integration
• The implications of class identity for social policy preferences
• The attitudinal effects of the structure of inequality across the income spectrum
• The equality and welfare content of party manifestoes
• The use of targeted versus universalistic party appeals

 

Insiders and Outsiders

What factors shape relations between insiders and outsiders? Building from research I conducted as part of my PhD, I have explored the division between groups that have historically been protected by social policy and labour market regulations (i.e. insiders) and those we have excluded from that protection (i.e. outsiders).

Some of the topics I have addressed with this research include:

• The drivers of social assistance reforms
• The relationship between care work, inequality, and job satisfaction
• The effect of labour market vulnerability on attitudes toward immigrants and asylum-seeking policy
• The impact of the insider/outsider divide on generalised trust
• The institutional and political determinants of coverage extension (book - open access copy)

If you’re interested in finding a proper e-version of my book and are affiliated with a university, you may be able to get access through JSTOR. Alternatively, you can buy a copy of the book from Amsterdam University Press or elsewhere.