Research

Loughborough professor appointed as Labour peer

Ruth Lister CBE, Emeritus Professor of Social Policy at Loughborough, has been appointed as a member of the House of Lords.

Ruth Lister has been Emeritus Professor of Social Policy at Loughborough since October last year, having joined the University in 1994. Prior to that she was Professor and Head of the Department of Applied Social Studies at the University of Bradford for six years, and between 1971 and 1987 worked for the Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG), a national campaigning charity, spending the last eight years as its director.

Professor Lister was awarded the CBE in 1999 and elected as one of the founding Academicians of the Academy of Social Sciences the same year. She was instrumental in the award of Loughborough University’s fifth Queen’s Anniversary Prize for Higher and Further Education in 2005 for its contribution to social policy.

In 2009 she was elected a Fellow of the British Academy and this year received a life-time achievement award from the Social Policy Association. She was also a member of the National Equality Panel, established by the then Minister for Women and Equality, Harriet Harman.

“I am delighted to have been appointed as a member of the House of Lords,” said Professor Lister. “As a Peer I will be able to raise still further the profile of social policy and social justice issues in the UK.”