Professor Ruth Lister CBE. FBA. AcSS.
biography : publications : workshops & talks : links
As from October 2010, I have held the position of Emeritus Professor of Social Policy. I joined the Department as Professor of Social Policy in January 1994. Prior to that I was Professor and Head of the Department of Applied Social Studies at the University of Bradford for six years. From 1971 to 1987, I worked for the Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG), a national campaigning charity, the last eight years as Director. I was elected as Honorary President of CPAG in December 2010, following the late Professor Peter Townsend. On February 1st 2011, I joined the House of Lords as a Labour peer, with the title of the Baroness Lister of Burtersett (a village in Wensleydale where my grandparents lived and which I still visit regularly).
I graduated from the University of Essex in 1970 with a BA (Hons) in Sociology and hold an MA in Multi-Racial Studies from the University of Sussex and an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Manchester.
My initial work as an academic built on my earlier campaigning work, focusing very much on poverty and the social security system. This continues to be an important strand in my work, as reflected in my book on the concept of poverty published as Poverty late 2004 by Polity Press (see http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1352913,00.html for an article I wrote in The Guardian based on the book). In 2004 I gave the third Bevan Foundation Annual Lecture at the University of Cardiff on Poverty & Social Justice: recognition and respect. I have developed some of the ideas in the book further in ‘A New Politics of Respect’ (Soundings, 32, 2006); The Savings Gateway (with Sonia Sodha, IPPR, 2006) and ‘(Mis)recognition, social inequality and social justice: a critical social policy perspective’ in T. Lovell ed. (Mis)recognition, social inequality and social justice (Routledge 2007). I have also given a number of papers that explore a human rights conceptualisation of poverty. In addition, I have co-edited (with Jason Strelitz) Why Money Matters, published by Save the Children in 2008. Poverty has been translated into Polish and Macedonian and is currently being translated into Japanese. My next task is to write a second edition.
Other elements in this strand of work include a number of commentaries on ‘welfare’ reform [see, for instance, Critical Social Policy 18(2), 1997 and 21(4),2002; Renewal 5(3/4), 1997 and 8(4) 2000; New Economy 5(1), 1998 and 8(2) 2001; Renewal 18(1), 2010 with Fran Bennett]. I have also been exploring the implications of the emergence of a ‘social investment state’, as in ‘Investing in the citizen-workers of the future; transformations in citizenship and the state under New Labour’, Social Policy & Administration, 37(5), 2003; ‘Children (but not women) first: New Labour, child welfare and gender’, Critical Social Policy, 26(2) and a number of book chapters.
I am currently acting as a consultant on a Joseph Rowntree Foundation funded project, Living through change in challenging neighbourhoods, based at Sheffield Hallam University. Two earlier studies are relevant to my work on poverty and social exclusion. The first was a study with Peter Beresford, funded by the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust and Brunel University, of the attitudes of people in poverty to current debates about poverty. A report, Poverty First Hand, was published by CPAG in 1999.
The second was a study of the distribution of income within families receiving social security benefits, funded by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF). This was carried out in conjunction with Claire Callender and the researcher was Jackie Goode. A report, Purse or Wallet? Gender Inequalities and Income Distribution within Families was published by the Policy Studies Institute in 1998. A summary was published by JRF in their Findings series, a copy of which can be found on their website http://www.jrf.org.uk/jrf.htm. An article also appeared in the Journal of Social Welfare & Family Law 21(3), 1999. This second study reflects the gendered focus of much of my more recent work on poverty and social security. The most recent published contribution on this topic was half of a report published in March 2005 by the Women’s Budget Group called Women’s and Children’s Poverty: making the links. This can be downloaded from www.wbg.org.uk. This theme is developed further in a chapter in The International Handbook of Gender and Poverty (2010, Edward Elgar), edited by Sylvia Chant.
This then links in with the second main strand of my work: a feminist approach to citizenship. I rather stumbled into citizenship theory in 1989 when I was asked to deliver the Eleanor Rathbone Memorial Lecture. I was struck by how Eleanor Rathbone and some of her contemporaries drew on the language of citizenship to make the case for the endowment of motherhood. Their gendered understanding of the concept stood in contrast to the ‘gender-blind’ and therefore gender-biased way in which it was being used by politicians in the late 1980s. Since then the subject has continued to fascinate me and I have developed my work to address wider questions of difference and exclusion, not only at the national but also the international level. While more theoretical than my earlier work, I have continued to ground the theory in issues of policy, practice and practical politics. My book, Citizenship: Feminist Perspectives was published by Macmillan and New York University Press at the beginning of 1998 and a second expanded edition was published by Palgrave in 2003. A Chinese translation has now been published. The book is featured as a ‘feminist classic’ in Women’s Studies Quarterly 38 (1 & 2, 2010).
In addition, published articles on this aspect of my work include: ‘Dialectics of citizenship’, Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy, 12(4), 1997; ‘Citizenship and difference: towards a differentiated universalism’, European Journal of Social Theory, 1(1), 1998; ‘Citizenship at the margins’, European Journal of Social Work, 1(1), 1998, together with a chapter in the Blackwell Companion of Political Sociology (2001)and the Handbook of Citizenship Studies (Sage). Among related publications in this area are: "'Reforming welfare around the work ethic": new gendered and ethical perspectives on work and care', Policy & Politics 27(2), 1999; 'Citizenship, exclusion and the "third way": reflections on T.H. Marshall', Journal of Social Security Law, 7(2), 2000 (based on the 1999 T.H.Marshall Lecture), 'Towards a citizens' welfare state: the 3 + 2 'R's of Welfare Reform, Theory, Culture & Society, 18(2-3), 2001; and 'The dilemmas of pendulum politics: balancing paid work, care and citizenship; Economy and Society, 31(4), 2002; ‘Inclusive citizenship: realising the potential’, Citizenship Studies, 11(1), 2007; ‘Being feminist’, Government and Opposition, 40 (3), 2005; ‘A Nordic Nirvana? Gender, citizenship and social justice in the Nordic welfare states’, Social Politics 16(2), 2009; and a number of book chapters.
I have also pursued my interest in citizenship through empirical research. Together with Sue Middleton, Noel Smith and Lynne Cox of the Centre for Research in Social Policy, I conducted an ESRC-funded three year project looking at how young people negotiate the transitions to citizenship. This was part of the ESRC’s Youth, Citizenship and Social Change Programme: http://www.tsa.uk.com/YCS. The first publication from the project was Young Peoples Voices. Citizenship Education (with S. Middleton & N. Smith Youth Work Press, 2002). An article on how young people think about citizenship, ‘Young people talk about citizenship: empirical perspectives on theoretical and political debates’ is published in Citizenship Studies 7(2), 2003.
One offshoot of this work has been to start thinking about children’s relationship to citizenship. As well as a number of seminar papers and a forthcoming book chapter, the main product of this area of investigation is ‘Why Citizenship: where, when and how children?’, Theoretical Inquiries in Law, 8(2), 2007. ‘Investing in children and childhood: a new welfare policy paradigm and its implications’ (Comparative Social Research, vol. 25, 2008) links this work back to that on the social investment state.
I have also been involved in a number of cross national research networks with an interest in citizenship. The first, based in Utrecht, is the European Network for Theory and Research on Women, Welfare State and Citizenship. A sub-group produced a special issue of Critical Social Policy (vol. 18(3), 1998) on 'Vocabularies of Citizenship and Gender in Northern Europe' in which I contributed the piece on the UK. We have subsequently published a jointly authored book, Gendering Citizenship in Western Europe: New challenges for citizenship research in a cross-national context (Lister et al., The Policy Press , 2007). The second was the European Commission’s COST A13 Changing Labour Markets, Welfare Policies and Citizenship working group on ‘gender issues’. I have also participated in a network on Social Policies and Social Citizenship Rights: Change and continuity in Europe, which was part of a wider European Network of Excellence ‘Civil Society and New Forms of Governance in Europe’ (www.cinefogo.org). An edited collection, which brings together the Network’s work, will be published as Social Policy and Citizenship by Oxford University Press.
My teaching interests focused mainly on poverty and income maintenance and on women’s welfare and citizenship. I continue to teach a compulsory module on social policy theory and concepts. Policy Press (www.policypress.org.uk) has published a book based on this module – Understanding Theories and Concepts in Social Policy (2010) – in the Understanding Welfare series.
I have been active in the Social Policy Association and was Chair of the Joint University Council Social Policy Committee 1994-1996. I was elected as one of the founding Academicians of the Academy of Social Sciences and awarded the CBE in 1999. From 2005 till early 2007, I spent short periods of time in the University of Glasgow as the first Donald Dewar Visiting Professor of Social Justice. This was marked with a public lecture, The Scales of Social Justice, a version of which was published as ‘Social justice: meanings and politics’, The Journal of Poverty and Social Justice, 15(2), 2007. I was for six years (until Summer 2009) chair of the editorial board of Social Policy & Administration and sit on it and a number of other journal editorial boards. I was a co-recipient of the Queen’s Anniversary Prize for Higher and Further Education, which was awarded to the university for its contribution to social policy in 2005. With Alexandra Dobrowolsky, I was awarded the 2006 Jill Vickers Prize by the Canadian Political Science Association. I was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2009 and received a life-time achievement award from the Social Policy Association in 2010.
Alongside my academic work, I have served as a member of the Commission on Social Justice, set up by the late John Smith, to advise the Labour Party. Our report, Social Justice. Strategies for National Renewal, was published by Vintage in 1994. I also sat on the Opsahl Commission on the future of Northern Ireland. This was set up by an independent group, Initiative ‘92, and it took written and oral evidence from a wide variety of groups and individuals on a very broad range of issues. Our report was published by Liliput Press in 1993.
I was also a member of a Commission on Poverty, Participation and Power, established by the UK Coalition against Poverty as part of their Voices for Change consultation project. The Commission's focus was the participation of people with experience of poverty in decision-making that affects their lives. The Commission was unusual in that half of its members had direct experience of poverty. This made it a particularly rewarding and challenging experience for me. Our report was published at the end of 2000 by Policy Press (www.policypress.org.uk ) in association with the Coalition, as Listen Hear: The Right to be Heard and a formal evaluation was published by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. I have published an article, which reflects on the process and which attempts to make a normative theoretical case for the participation of people in poverty in decision-making and debates about poverty: 'A politics of recognition and respect: involving people with experience of poverty in decision making that affects their lives 'Social Policy and Society, 1(1), 2002. Some of the themes were developed further in ‘From object to subject: including marginalised citizens in policy making’, Policy & Politics, 35(3), 2007, based on a keynote speech to the international Policy & Politics conference. I sat on the Fabian Commission on Life Chances and Child Poverty. Our final report was published in 2006 as Narrowing the Gap.
Most recently, I was a member of the National Equality Panel, established by the Minister for Women and Equality, Harriet Harman, and chaired by Professor John Hills. Our report, An Anatomy of Economic Inequality in the UK, was published in January 2010. I was also a member of a task group on social protection as part of Sir Michael Marmot’s Strategic Review of Health Inequalities in England, Post 2010. The task group’s report is available at http://sticerd.lse.ac.uk/dps/case/cp/CASEpaper139.pdf. In 2000, I was appointed by the Home Office as a Trustee of the Community Development Foundation from 2000 to 2010. I am also a member of the Advisory Committee of the Smith Institute and sit on various other voluntary sector and research advisory committees.