The SPA’s activities are co-ordinated by an elected Executive Committee. All members of the SPA are eligible to stand and elections for the Executive Committee are held at the AGM during SPA’s Annual Conference. The SPA is committed to promoting the discipline of Social Policy and representing its members’ interests. The SPA Executive operates under an agreed statement of ethics.
If you would like to discuss a particular issue with the SPA Executive or are interested in joining the Executive then please contact the relevant Executive member below.
Ann Marie Gray
Chair
Ulster University
Ann Marie Gray is Professor of Social Policy at Ulster University and co-director of ARK, a joint Ulster University/Queen’s University research centre.
Ann Marie’s research interests include adult social care, devolution and social policy and gender and social policy. She is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences.
Lord Sikka (Prem Nath Sikka)
President
Lord Sikka has been a member of the UK House of Lords since October 2020. He is also Emeritus Professor of Accounting at the University of Essex and University of Sheffield.
Lork Sikka holds the Working for Justice Award from Tax Justice Network, Accounting Exemplar Award from the American Accounting Association (AAA), Lifetime Achievement Awards from the British Accounting and Finance Association (BAFA) and PQ Magazine, Personality of the Year Award from Accountancy Age and the inaugural (in 2017) Abraham Briloff Award from The Accountant and International Accounting Bulletin for promoting transparency and public accountability of businesses and the 2024 Public Understanding of Social Policy Award from the Social Policy Association. In January 2019, he was named by Accountancy Age as one of the 50 most influential individuals in the world of accounting
His research on accountancy, auditing, tax avoidance, tax havens, corruption, corporate governance, money laundering, insolvency and business affairs has been published in international scholarly journals, books, newspapers and magazines. He has appeared on domestic and international radio and television programmes to comment on business matters. He has advised and given evidence to a number of UK and EU parliamentary committees. He advised the UK House of Commons Work and Pensions Committee for its investigation into the collapse of BHS and Carillion.
Gideon Calder
Vice Chair / Grants
Swansea University
Gideon is Associate Professor and Co-Head of the Department of Criminology, Sociology and Social Policy at Swansea University, where he also leads on Postgraduate Research for the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences.
His main current research interests lie in three areas, which sometimes overlap: inequalities and social justice around families and childhood; ethics, including in research; and co-production. He is co-editor of the journal Ethics and Social Welfare, and chair of the Newport Fairness Commission.
Steve Rolfe
Secretary
University of Stirling
Steve is a Lecturer in Social Policy at the University of Stirling, having escaped to academia after 15 years in local government.
His research interests are quite diverse, including housing, health, local government and community participation. The common thread lies in evaluation methodology, focused on understanding causality in complex processes and systems.
Athina Vlachantoni
Treasurer
University of Southampton
Athina is Professor of Gerontology and Social Policy at the University of Southampton.
Her research interests are at the interface between population ageing and social policy, and she teaches and researches in topics such as pension protection, informal care provision and receipt, and intergenerational exchange. Athina is a member of the Editorial Board for the Journal of Social Policy.
Victoria Duffy
Senior Administrator
Ulster University
Victoria provides administration support to the Executive Committee of The Social Policy Association and is an Executive Assistant in the School of Applied Social and Policy Sciences on the Magee Campus, Ulster University.
Victoria is also a PhD Candidate in History in the School of Arts and Humanities, Ulster University. Her thesis explores the life and work of the Catholic Bishop of Cork, Dr Francis Moylan (1735-1815). Her research interests include: the evolution of Catholic identity and the development of social thought in the Eighteenth Century, alternative voices and their response to the State.
PORTFOLIOS
Sade Ajose
Postgraduate Research (PGR)
Swansea University
Sade is a PhD student at Swansea University, focusing on racism in education. Her research examines the disproportionate exclusion of Black Caribbean girls from secondary schools using Critical Race Theory (CRT). As an active PhD student, Sade brings firsthand knowledge of the challenges faced by PGRs, ensuring that our events and initiatives are relevant and tailored to the evolving needs of fellow researchers.
Alessio D’Angelo
Impact and Engagement
University of Derby
Alessio is Professor of Social Policy at the University of Derby, where he co-directs the Centre for Applied Social Sciences, Policy, Practice and Research (CASSPPR).
His research interests include migration, social inequalities and access to public services, with a particular focus on the role of Third Sector organisations, social networks, social capital, and social infrastructure. His work employs quantitative, qualitative and mixed methods and he has particular expertise in Social Network Analysis (SNA) and data mapping. He also coordinate the Interdisciplinary Partnership on Health Inequalities and Race (IPHIR) and he is the Editor of the SPA journal Social Policy and Society.
Natalija Atas
Conference 2026
Liverpool Hope University
Natalija is a Senior Lecturer in Health and Social Care based at Liverpool Hope University. Her research explores issues related to poverty, inequalities and social determinants of health. She is currently investigating various dimensions of poverty and the impacts of the cost-of-living crisis.
Natalija is also the co-founder of the Poverty Research and Advocacy Network (PRAN), through which she collaborates with a wide range of stakeholders to raise awareness and address poverty and inequality across the UK.
Hayley Bennett
Awards
University of Edinburgh
Dr Bennett is a Lecturer in Social Policy at the University of Edinburgh.
Her research examines the design and delivery of UK social security, active labour market programmes, and anti-poverty initiatives. She has a particular interest in multi-level governance, devolution, and place-based inequalities. She predominately uses qualitative methodologies and specialises in collaborative and participatory research approaches.
Alexandra Chapman
Membership Secretary
Ulster University
Alexandra Chapman is an Early Career Researcher and Lecturer at Ulster University School of Applied Social and Policy Studies.
Her research interests include adult social care, social security and devolution.
Colin Clark
Conferences
University of the West of Scotland (UWS)
Colin is Associate Dean (Research and Innovation) and Professor of Sociology and Social Policy in the School of Education and Social Sciences at the University of the West of Scotland.
His research interests are primarily located within the connected fields of Ethnic and Racial Studies and Migration Studies, with a specialist interest in Romani Studies. Colin’s research is primarily qualitative, with expertise in ethnographic methods.
Colin is also a member of the editorial board of the SPA journal Social Policy and Society, and the Liverpool University Press journal, Romani Studies.
Ruby C M Chau
Teaching & Learning
University of Nottingham
Ruby Chau is an Associate Professor in Public and Social Policy and the Director of the International Centre for Public and Social Policy at the University of Nottingham.
Her primary research interests include comparative welfare studies, the cultural sensitivity of health and social care, de-familization/familization, social policy education, and women's welfare and work.
Elizabeth Cookingham Bailey
International Engagement
University of York
Dr Elizabeth Cookingham Bailey is a Lecturer in Public Policy and Management at the University of York. She was previously a Lecturer in Public Service Management at the University of South Wales and a Research Fellow at the Third Sector Research Centre at the University of Birmingham.
Her research looks at the role of voluntary sector organisations and interest groups in the creation of policy, the mixed economy of public service provision, education policy and the history of social policy.
Naomi Finch
Marketing
University of York
Naomi is a lecturer in Social Policy at the University of York.
Her research interests focus on gender equality specifically related to work and care, and how welfare states shape, support and value care. She mainly focuses on intra-household care, how parents share care and work, and the implications of this both in terms of gender equality in the labour market, and other areas such as parental and child wellbeing and poverty. She specialises in micro and comparative quantitative analysis.
Clementine Hill O’Connor
UG/PGR/ECR
Clemmie is a Research Fellow at the University of Glasgow in the Division of Urban Studies and Social Policy and an Affiliated Researcher at the Centre for Public Policy.
Her research focus is on the role of citizens and citizen voices in policy-making processes, public engagement as evidence and gendered responses to welfare conditionality.
Christina Pantazis
Strategy
Christina is Professor of Zemiology in the School for Policy Studies, University of Bristol.
Christina's research focuses on two broad areas: (i) social harm and criminalisation; and (ii) poverty, social exclusion and inequality, particularly concerning issues related to gender and ethnicity.
Enrico Reuter
Teaching and Learning
University of York
Enrico is Lecturer in Public and Social Policy at the University of York.
His current research interests are in self-employment (and the wider context of changing wage-labour conditions and social protection systems), in public service reform (with a focus on the ideational underpinnings of reform trends), and in the crisis of liberal democracy (notably with respect to the principle of popular sovereignty).
Ewan Robertson
Communications
University of Edinburgh
Ewan is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow on the project Studying Parliaments and the Role of Knowledge (SPARK).
Ewan holds a PhD in Social Policy from the University of Edinburgh. His thesis examined the driving forces behind the development of in-work benefit policies in France and the UK since the 1990s. His wider research interests include working-age social security, the interaction between labour markets and social security, comparative welfare state analysis, and the role of ideas in (social) policy-making.
Dianne-Dominique Theakstone
Equalities
University of Stirling
Dr Dianne-Dominique Theakstone is a research fellow at the University of Stirling working on the ‘Intersectional Stigma and Place-based Aging’ (ISPA) project.
Dianne is a qualified social worker, has experience in academic, public, private and third sector environments and is involved in adult accessibility issues around accessible/adaptive housing. Dianne’s lived experience of disablement drives her passion for enabling others to access independent living, particularly through her role as trustee with Sight Scotland and Sight Scotland Veterans, as well as Horizon Housing.
Janice Tripney
Publications
University College London
Janice is Associate Professor of Social Policy at UCL (University College London).
She is the Programme Director for the MSc Social Policy and Social Research, Pathway Leader (Social Policy) for the UBEL (UCL, Bloomsbury and East London) Doctoral Training Partnership, and an editor of the journal London Review of Education. Key interests and publications include work on methods for research synthesis and research-policy relations.
JOURNALS
Note: the chairs of our journal editorial boards are not members of the Social Policy Association executive. However given the importance of our journals for our activities and mission, we include their profiles here for informational purposes. The journals are represented on the executive via the publications portfolio.
Fiona Dukelow
Chair of the Editorial Board, Journal of International and Comparative Social Policy
Chris Holden
Chair of the Editorial Board, Journal of Social Policy
University of York
Chris Holden is Professor of International Social Policy at the University of York, UK, where he is Director of the Centre for Research in Comparative and Global Social Policy (CRCG).
His research focuses on the impacts of the global economy and the activities of transnational corporations on health and welfare outcomes.