For my day job I research approaches to public participation in social policy decision making for a PhD in the Department of Social Policy and Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion (CASE) at the London School of Economics. As a part of my PhD I spent half of 2015 as a Visiting Democracy Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School's Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation.

I am also moonlighting on two additional research projects: one investigating trends in social exclusion outcomes for young people with Moira Wallace (Oriel College, Oxford); the other exploring people's preferences for local governance with Catherine Durose (Birmingham) and Liz Richardson (Manchester).

My primary research interest is in how political and social thought plays out in the practice of policy, and my PhD explores how our ideas about participation are influenced by more general theories about democracy and public administration. I am also interested in the history of, and attitudes to, the welfare state, the measurement and impact of poverty, inequality and social exclusion, and social research methodology.

I originally studied philosophy at the University of Sussex, but my interest in policy was piqued when working for Christopher Hood on the ESRC Public Services Programme. I subsequently undertook an MSc in Social Policy Research at the LSE, for which I was awarded the Richard Titmus Prize for Outstanding Performance. My current research is supervised by Tania Burchardt and Hartley Dean and funded by the ESRC.