CSSP Year in Review

We have grown as a department, with new staff joining, new projects starting and the impending launch of a new MSc programme in Public Health. We have been busy refreshing our research clusters (more on this coming soon) and updating our annual programme of activities.

Highlights include the launch of a new writing group, a new series of events around research funding, and the hosting of a number of international visitors in the department. In November 2025, we hosted Prof. Sébastien Tutenges (Aarhus University, Denmark) who visited Loughborough as an IAS Fellow. In March 2026, we welcomed Dr Emma Casey from the University of York to deliver the Annual Sociology Lecture.

Emma's lecture draws on her award-winning book 'The Return of the Housewife: Why women are still cleaning up'. In June, we held a virtual seminar from Prof. Sabrina Zegiche, Department of Social Work, Universite Quebec en Outaouais titled: ‘From Concealment to Recognition: Ethics and Lived Experiences of Insemination Fraud’. 

In this end of year update, we outline some of the activities of our staff and postgraduate students. We work across the boundaries of our expertise, drawing together criminology, sociology, and social policy to generate richer, more integrated understandings of social life. This collaborative ethos enables us to address complex societal challenges in ways that no single discipline could achieve alone. Our research interests and activities are organised around the following thematic clusters:

• Crime, violence and justice
• Health, illness and medicine
• Identity, culture and intersectionality
• Living standards, needs and income adequacy 

This year’s achievements reflect the breadth and impact of CSSP's research and showcases the department’s continuing commitment to producing research that advances knowledge, informs practice and contributes to positive social change. 

If you would like to collaborate with us, are interested in joining us for a visit, or wish to study for a PhD, contact our Head of Department, Prof. Mark Monaghan.

The crime, violence and justice cluster brings together staff and students working across the full spectrum of criminological inquiry. Research in this cluster is united by a commitment to rigorous, impactful research which centres the experiences of victims and offenders, and has a particular expertise in research on gender and with young people.  

Members have published papers and chapters across a range of topics and outputs. A selection include those in: the American Psychologist, (Megan Hugget and Neema Travedi-Bateman), Trauma, Violence, & Abuse (Eleanor Manhong Li, Neema Travedi-Bateman and Dom Willmott), the British Journal of Criminology (Amy Cortvriend, Mark Monaghan), Policing and Society (Mark Monaghan), Deviant Behaviour (Masahiro Suzuki), Youth (Steve Case), and a chapter in 'Building an Outstanding Police Service (John Coxhead).  

Chris Kay has published his monograph: 'Youth Desistance in Transition: Navigating Change in Late Adolescence' (2025) Taylor and Francis.

Prof. Mark Monaghan and colleagues were awarded a large-scale £1.46 million project looking at the role of Lived Experience Recovery Organisations as part of the substance misuse treatment and recovery system in England and Wales.

Neema Trivedi-Bateman and collaborators in Sweden were awarded £80,000 to translate and implement the SATNAV youth crime reduction programme through the SATNAV:Compass Sweden project, funded by the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention. In partnership with Örebro Municipality and Malmo university, the team launched the project to translate and implement the SATNAV schools-based youth crime reduction programme in Sweden.

Laura Jenkins secured funding from the British Academy Conference Grant scheme to host the conference: ‘Voices of Justice: Transforming Communication in Policing and Criminal Justice Settings’. 

Mark Monaghan’s work on drug diversion schemes was featured in The Guardian and concluded with a national symposium hosted by the University of Sheffield.

Laura Jenkins organised the international Forensic Conversations in Criminal Justice Settings conference, welcoming 100 scholars who use conversation analysis and related methods in criminal justice settings. 

Neema Trivedi-Bateman was Invited to Germany to participate in the Juvenile Delinquency in Urban School and Residential Contexts workshop, funded by the German Research Foundation. Neema convened and presented at a dedicated SATNAV panel at the Stockholm Criminology Symposium, highlighting the development, implementation and evaluation of the programme in Sweden to an international audience of researchers and practitioners. She was also invited to deliver a research workshop at SWPS University (Poland), disseminating the SATNAV:Compass programme and its underpinning research to an international audience, fostering knowledge exchange on youth crime prevention and intervention development. 

Amy Cortvriend has worked alongside her local community to bring together activist, lived experience, ECR and academic voices to convene a panel at the 'Intergalactic' Conference on Resistance Studies. 

Neema Trivedi-Bateman was an invited guest on the University of Wisconsin–Green Bay Psychology Department's Psychology and Stuff podcast Episode 185: Can You Teach a Moral Compass?, discussing research on moral development, youth crime prevention, and the SATNAV:Compass programme. The episode was distributed across major platforms, including Spotify, Apple Podcasts and Instagram, extending the international reach and public engagement of the research. 

Amy Cortvriend has collaborated with Blackbird Community Project. She has delivered public workshops on immigration policy and community resistance, performed a self-authored poem exploring what 'home' means for people seeking asylum, and is engaged in an ongoing community education project. Her impact and engagement work was recognised in this year's Research and Innovation Awards as highly commended in the 'Outstanding Civic Engagement' Category.  

Mark Monaghan disseminated findings to an event hosted by the N8 in Partnership with the Scottish Institute for Policing Research based on realist synthesis of the project findings.

Olivia Smith was appointed to the Bar Standards Board advisory group, the only academic member. 

Jenny Ardley gave evidence at the All Party Parliamentary group on maternity care in June and is working with the Nursing and Midwifery Council to produce resources for families who have experienced a traumatic birth.

CSSP members working on health, illness and biomedicine conduct research that focuses on improving understanding of lived experience of health and illness across the lifecourse as well as the socio-political organization of health and social care provision.  

Our team have published a range of papers in high profile journals including: Sociology of Health and Illness (Katie Coveney), Social Science and Medicine (Nicky Hudson), Journal of Eating Disorders (Paula Saukko), Journal of Community Genetics (Nicky Hudson), Health Economic, Policy and Law (Justin Waring), and Journal of Critical Public Health (Justin Waring). 

Laura Jenkins co-edited a special issue of Patient Education and Counseling. 

Nicky Hudson co-edits the series Reproduction and Society, Liverpool University Press. 

Kylie Baldwin has received NIHR funding for research into egg freezing in collaboration with Oxford University and Leicester Partnership Trust. The 22 month long project is titled 'Navigating Egg Freezing: Experiences, decisions and support needs through the journey/care pathway'. 

Laura Jenkins co-organised a British Academy ECR event with English department colleague Jade French. The event was titled 'Working with partners in the Health Humanities'. 

Nicky Hudson, Kylie Baldwin and Katie Coveney organized a half day event marking the relaunch of the East Midlands Medical Sociology Group, from Loughborough University. The event included a keynote from Prof. Karen Throsby, Leeds University, and aimed to showcase current work in medical sociology while fostering new collaborations and strengthening interdisciplinary connections across institutions.  

Laura Jenkins' work was cited in clinical guidelines and recommendations for the management of functional seizures.

Paula Saukko presented insights from her research on eating disorders to a workshop for clinicians organised by the UK national eating disorder charity Beat on Social Media and Eating Disorders. 

Paula Saukko’s published research on how people with eating disorders experience and negotiate social media algorithms was covered in BBC Radio 4’s The Food Programme, About the Girls. 

Nicky Hudson contributed both oral and written evidence to the current Parliamentary inquiry into egg donation and egg freezing, launched by the Women and Equalities Committee of the House of Commons. 

Colleagues working on the theme of identity, culture and intersectionality explore how people experience, express, and negotiate identity, belonging, and community in the context of evolving social norms, structures, and inequalities. This theme showcases the department’s attention to how identity and community shape – and are shaped by – broader patterns of social transformation and inequality. 

Papers from the ICI cluster included publications in the British Journal of Sociology (Simone Varriale, Kristine Aune), Cultural Sociology (Simone Varriale), Review of Religious Research (Line Nyhagen), Antipode (Simone Varriale), and Gender, Work and Organisation (Tom Thurnell-Read). 

Line Nyhagen published a report on the lived experiences of Muslim students and staff in higher education with doctoral researcher Rafia Arshad and recent PhD graduate Dr. Ellie Moore. The research was funded by the Aziz Foundation and Loughborough University. 

Line Nyhagen is co-editor of the Springer Link/Palgrave book series Citizenship, Gender and Diversity, and welcomes book proposals for the series.  

Line is a member of the management team and research teams within the international, interdisciplinary research project ‘Negotiating Values in Teacher Education’, funded by the Research Council of Norway (12 million NOK, 2025–2028) and led by Western Norway University of Applied Sciences. In January 2026, Line's invited role as Professor 2 (Adjunct Professor) in the Department of Pedagogy, Religion and Social Studies at the Western Norway University of Applied Sciences in Bergen, Norway, was renewed for a second 3-year term. 

Laura Valadez-Martinez secured a Social Policy Association Opportunity Grant for a workshop entitled ‘Bridging the Gap: Children’s Social Media Use Across School and Home Contexts’. 

Doctoral student, Junlin Luo, has been successful securing funding from the China Scholarship Council (CSC) scholarship scheme to fund the remaining two years of her studies. The title of her thesis is: 'Constructing and Reconstructing Middle Class identity in Contemporary China: A discourse analysis of changing consumption of an idealised West in the Chinese lifestyle magazine Yilin'. 

Doctoral student, Oyedoyin Oyerinde was recently awarded the John Guest Phillips Travelling Scholarship, which contributed toward the cost of in-person fieldwork in Jos, Nigeria.  

Together with colleagues Dr Kerri Akiwowo and Prof James Esson, Line has led the Mini-Doctoral Training Centre ‘Unequal Academic Citizenship: Opportunities and Barriers to Participation and Inclusion of Cultural Diversity and Intersecting Identities in Higher Education’ (CITHEI; 2021-2025), funded by Loughborough University. This year saw the completion of two more PhD researchers, Dr Jess Moody and Dr Ellie Moore. Previous PhD graduates from the Mini-DTC include Dr Rhianna Garrett and Dr Naomi Alormele.  

Laura Valadez-Martinez secured an MGS ESRC Strategic Joint PhD studentship 'Perceived Impact of Expanded Early Years Childcare in England: Effects on Children's Well-being'. 

In July 2025, Tom Thurnell-Read hosted the end of award Symposium for the Leverhulme Trust project on the social and cultural impact of pub closures.

In April 2026, Tom Thurnell-Read gave a guest lecture at the Graduate Institute of European Cultures and Tourism at National Taiwan Normal University.  

Surya Monro gave a keynote talk: ‘Considering Gender Beyond the Binary: 30+ years from a (mostly) UK-located perspective’ at the Complicating Gender(s) – in Complicated Contexts Symposium (Manchester Metropolitan University, 9 June 2026). 

Surya Monro (with Berry, A), gave the talk, ‘Intephobia and Endosexism: Towards an understanding of structural inequalities’, keynote for the Deviants, Sinners and Rebels: Sexuality studies in times of trouble – European Sociology Association RN23 Sexuality Mid-Term conference (Palermo, 11-12 September 2025). 

Doyin Oyerinde presented at the British Sociological Association (BSA) Annual Conference earlier this year, drawing on their doctoral research on the Gender Digital Divide in Northern Nigeria. 

Surya Munro provided invited advice for the LGBT+ NHS Evidence Review (2025) as well as delivering an invited presentation to the Office of National Statistics Harmonisation Unit. 

Simone Varriale was invited by the organisation Black Europeans to present his research at their Social Diplomacy Summit in Bristol in May 2026. At the event, Simone shared key findings from the project Black European Mobilities with representatives from EU embassies and consulates, the Home Office, the NHS, and third sector organisations working on the impact of Brexit on EU migrants.

Shaping and building societies in which all can live with dignity, participate in the world around them, and meet their minimum needs, through challenging inadequate incomes and inequalities. This theme specifically captures the work of the Centre for Research in Social Policy (CRSP) and their commitment to improving living standards, particularly for the most vulnerable, through producing high-quality, timely applied social policy research and analysis. 

The CRSP team have published a number of reports, comments and articles this year including: 

• A Minimum Income Standard for the United Kingdom in 2025 
• Characteristics and population estimates of unpaid end of life carers: An observational study (in Palliative Medicine) 
• A Minimum Income Standard for London 2025 
• Fuel poverty risk at the end of life needs urgent attention (in Nature Energy) 
• Including vulnerable participants in research (Chapter in Research in Health and Social Care) 

CRSP has secured funding for a number of new and continuing projects this year. This includes:  

• £195,000 from a consortium of funders (Argyll and Bute Council, Comhairle Nan Eilean Siar, Orkney Islands Council, Hjaltland Housing Association, NHS Shetland and Shetland Islands Council) to develop A Minimum Income Standard for Argyll and Bute, Orkney, Outer Hebrides and Shetland. This research is being led by Matt Padley.
• £70,000 from Pensions UK for the next round of Retirement Living Standards research, led by Matt Padley.
• The Government of Jersey has funded a Minimum Income Standard for Jersey, led jointly by Katherine Hill and Matt Padley.
• £13,000 from Marie Curie to look at the impact of housing costs on the risk of poverty at the end of life. This work is being undertaken by Elaine Robinson and Juliet Stone and builds on ongoing funded research for Marie Curie on poverty at the end of life.
• The Higher Education Policy Institute has funded a Minimum Income Standard for Commuter Students, led by Katherine Hill, building on previous MIS for Students research.
• £10,000 from Glasgow City Region is funding a collaborative project to establish a new living standards indicator for the region, drawing on MIS and locally available data. This project is being jointly led by Matt Padley and Juliet Stone. 

Elaine Robinson gave an invited presentation on fuel poverty at the end of life to policy staff at Ofgem. The Ofgem staff who attended discussed adding an ‘end of life’ code to the Priority Services Register, the list used by suppliers and network operators to determine who needs emergency help if the power is off.  

Juliet Stone gave a talk about data requirements for monitoring child poverty at the Resolve Poverty conference in March 2026. 

Matt Padley attended a House of Lords event celebrating the success of the Safe Sick Pay campaign in influencing changes introduced through the Employment Rights Act. Matt has provided analysis and consultation throughout this campaign. 

Abigail Davis and Matt Padley attended the UN Business and Human Rights Forum in Geneva in November 2025 to launch the WageMap living wage global reference standard. The WageMap consortium’s mission is to support the achievement of living wages for workers globally, through establishing a living wage standard and through creating a public dataset of globally comparable, locally specific, living wage benchmarks.

Juliet Stone and Elaine Robinson’s ‘Poverty at the end of life’ research for Marie Curie has featured in a Times article about giving people with terminal illness early access to a state pension. Elaine and Juliet have also written a ‘Data Impact’ blog about this research for the UK Data Service website. 

The latest Retirement Living Standards, updated by Matt Padley and Wolf Ellis, were published in June. These figures received lots of media coverage, including articles on the BBC News website,  the Financial Times, and The Week. 

Juliet Stone took part in a Q&A session about the latest child poverty data with the Improvement Service for local government in Scotland, helping attendees to interpret changes in Households Below Average Income (which includes data on the official UK poverty indicators) and other statistics. 

Juliet Stone and Matt Padley submitted written evidence to the Education and Work and Pensions Select Committees inquiry, ‘Realising Potential: Delivering the Child Poverty Strategy’. 

Chloe Blackwell submitted a written response to the government’s consultation on proposals to reform the special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) system. 

Matt Padley is a member of the DWP’s Pensions Expert Group, tasked with using our expertise to test and critique emerging evidence feeding into the Second Pensions Commission. The Pensions Commission has published its interim report and evidence review in May 2026. This draws heavily on research from the Retirement Living Standards project and emphasises that pensions policy should enable everyone to have a reasonable standard of living in retirement. 

Matt Padley represented CRSP at a recent EU Reference Budgets network meeting in Utrecht (Netherlands), presenting UK MIS research and methodology.  

Our students led the way in charity fundraising this year with support from Matt Long, most notably for Sport Relief where both staff and students mingled to raise funds and awareness through some fun activities on campus.