For the second time, the SPA is operating a grant scheme specifically aimed at Early Career Researchers (ECRs). This scheme is dedicated to the facilitation of research.
Its aim is to create space for ECR SPA members to sustain their research momentum and secure concrete achievements at a stage in their career when these things can be especially challenging, due to other pressures and demands, and an increasingly competitive research funding environment.
It offers funds of up to £1000, with the possibility of follow-up funding in subsequent rounds. Grants received should be spent in the period September 2026-July 2027.
We anticipate that this scheme will run again in similar form in the summer of 2027.
SPA CAREER LAUNCH GRANT HOLDERS 2026/27
[Additional profiles of grant holders to be added]
Penelope Laycock
I am a Social Policy researcher and lecturer at the University of Glasgow, specialising in social policy, inequality, trauma-informed practice and evidence-informed approaches to education and public policy. I hold a PhD in Social Policy, alongside qualifications in Medical Anthropology and Biological Anthropology. My doctoral research explored the experiences of adult children of alcoholics growing up in Glasgow using a socioecological approach.
My current research examines how teaching and learning practices in higher education can be adapted to become more trauma-informed across the curriculum, rather than only when teaching sensitive subjects. I am exploring how pedagogical approaches can support psychologically safer, inclusive learning environments. Following interviews with academic staff, I am currently conducting student focus groups to examine experiences and perspectives on trauma-informed teaching and learning. The research will inform an evidence-informed framework and practical toolkit for trauma-informed higher education.
Sha (Lisa) Li
Dr Sha (Lisa) Li is a Social Science Tutor at the University of Bath International Study Centre and an early-career researcher working across social policy and sociology. Her research interests include family and social relationships, intergenerational care, ageing and social change. Her doctoral research at the University of Bath explored urban Chinese young adults’ expectations of caring for older family members and the implications for family life, employment and long-term care policy.
Her current project examines Relationship Security and Relationship Recession in the digital era and their implications for well-being, inequality and social policy. Through an interdisciplinary scoping review, two student workshops, two academic seminars and an international webinar, the project will develop a conceptual framework for understanding changing social relationships, guide future empirical research and support discussion of appropriate policy responses.
Yunyan Li
Dr Yunyan Li is an ESRC-funded Research Associate at the University of Leicester, currently working on a sector-wide study of institutional responses to harassment and targeted hostility in higher education. Her research examines how institutions meant to provide care and support, such as welfare systems, families, workplaces and universities, can instead produce and (re-)distribute harm and exclusion, and what justice and human need require of them in response.
Supported by the Social Policy Association Career-Launch Research Grant, Yunyan is leading a one-year exploratory study, Move to thrive: Co-creating mobility justice for human needs, which brings human needs approaches into dialogue with mobility justice and participatory governance to ask whose mobility needs are recognised and met, and whose voices count, as transport decisions are made. This study uses community-based participatory methods across two contrasting marginalised, low-car urban communities to examine how governance, spatial and cultural dynamics shape need satisfaction through the mobility system.
Dr Resya Kania
With a PhD from the University of Birmingham, Dr Resya Kania is a Research Fellow in the Department of Politics and International Studies at the University of Warwick. Her research explores how financial systems intersect with social policy, with a particular focus on policymaking processes. Resya worked as a researcher at the Solicitors Regulation Authority in the UK. She also held senior policy roles, including Director for Policy (Southeast Asia) at Women’s World Banking, and Deputy Director for Financial Services and State-Owned Enterprises at Indonesia’s National Development Planning Agency. With over a decade of experience in research and policymaking, Resya has worked across a range of issues including financial inclusion, consumer vulnerability, financial literacy, and women’s economic empowerment.
Dr Chalisa Chintrakarn
Dr Chalisa Chintrakarn is a Teaching Fellow at the University of Birmingham, where she received a Sociology PhD in 2024. She was previously at King’s College London and Ritsumeikan University (both Oita and Kyoto campuses in Japan). Her expertise includes political economy, inequalities, social policy, cultural and media studies, as well as East and Southeast Asia. Chalisa’s teaching in Birmingham spans research skills and methodology, criminology, sociology, and social policy (encompassing policy analysis and evaluation). She has published in the following journals: Feminist Media Studies, Educational Review, and European Journal of Cultural Studies.
Regarding this project supported by a SPA Career-Launch Research Grant, this initiative supports the development of SEASPN (Southeast Asia Social Policy Network). It will contribute to building an ASEAN–UK research network focused on collaborative social-policy research. Specifically, this project will devise a new research agenda on the relationship between middle classes and social policy in Southeast Asia and the UK. Across ASEAN and the United Kingdom, middle classes face a range of common challenges arising from global economic uncertainty, including rising living costs, labour market transformation, and demographic changes. However, comparative understandings of how middle classes experience these challenges – and how social policy responds across different contexts – remain limited.
The project investigates how middle classes are defined across contexts, and what their problems and aspirations are. This work is an exploratory mapping exercise examining how middle classes and social policy are conceptualised across Southeast Asia and the UK. It includes a small number of research discussions and interviews to identify research gaps, key themes, and potential directions for future comparative research.