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ESRC awards £8.26m for new Connecting Generations research
CPC Director, Professor Jane Falkingham OBE, is to lead one of six new ESRC research centres which will tackle critical social and economic issues.
Professor Falkingham will lead on ‘Connecting Generations’, exploring how issues such as living standards, jobs and pay, housing costs, taxes and benefits, work-life balance, and caring responsibilities are affected by population and generational changes.
Connecting Generations brings together experts from the University of Southampton, University of St Andrews, University of Stirling, University of Oxford, and the Resolution Foundation, as well as the Office for National Statistics and National Records of Scotland. Its remit will cover inequality in people’s opportunities and experiences, examining the impacts of gender, age, ethnicity, socio-economic background, education, and geographical region, to improve the lives of individuals, families and communities.
Brexit and the Covid-19 pandemic make the work of understanding existing inequalities, and foreseeing emerging inequalities, even more urgent. The team will work to understand the different impacts of Covid-19 and Brexit within and across generations, including how the ‘traditional’ stepping stones to adulthood have been affected by the pandemic.
Professor Falkingham comments: “I am delighted to be leading the new Connecting Generations partnership, and I’m excited to work with colleagues on this important topic for understanding societal change. It is a career highlight for me to be working with this esteemed team of experts, and I am thankful to the ESRC for recognising the value of this collaboration. We will have the opportunity to examine inequalities in life experiences, and why this matters for improving our society. This funding will enable us to provide researchbased evidence to policymakers to address growing concerns around fairness between generations, particularly as we emerge from Brexit and the Covid-19 pandemic.”
In total, the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) is awarding a £49m boost to six new centres. These awards are being made following a highly competitive process run by the ESRC which was open to new research ideas from all areas of social science.
ESRC research centres are major strategic investments which take forward an ambitious research agenda to deliver real societal and economic impact. They also provide robust research evidence to support government decision making.
Based across the UK, the centres will be located at the universities of Bristol, Loughborough, Sheffield, Southampton, Sussex and York. Many will be working as part of larger collaborative teams, bringing in expertise and support from partners as well as other UK and international universities. The Centre for Care based at the University of Sheffield is also receiving £1.5m of additional co-funding through a partnership with the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR). The successful projects are:
– Connecting Generations, led by Professor Jane Falkingham, University of Southampton
– The Centre for Care, led by Professor Sue Yeandle, University of Sheffield
– The Centre for Inclusive Trade Policy, led by Professor L. Alan Winters and Professor Michael Gasiorek, University of Sussex
– Vulnerability and Policing Futures Research Centre, co-directed by Professor Charlie Lloyd and Professor Adam Crawford, University of York and University of Leeds
– Centre for Early Mathematics Learning (CEML), led by Professor Camilla Gilmore, University of Loughborough – Centre for ‘Sociodigital’ Futures, led by Professor Susan Halford, University of Bristol.
UK Research and Innovation Chief Executive, Professor Dame Ottoline Leyser said: “Social science research is central to our efforts to build back better from the pandemic. The latest ESRC research centres will focus on some of the key societal issues to be addressed, such as social care, policing, inequalities between generations and the impact of digital technologies, and will help maintain the UK’s position at the forefront of social science research.”
Professor Alison Park, interim executive chair of ESRC said: “We are delighted to announce the funding for these six centres, which demonstrate the excellence, breadth and relevance of social science research. They will all bring a fresh social science perspective on many issues of major public and policy interest and will provide robust research evidence that can be used by policymakers and practitioners.
“Not only are research centres major strategic investments which have significant economic and societal impact, but they also add value by increasing research infrastructure, building capacity, encouraging interdisciplinary working and enabling research collaboration in the UK and internationally to bring about change.”
The existing CPC collaboration between the universities of Southampton, St Andrews and Stirling will continue, forming a new strategic partnership to study Connecting Generations with the Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science at the University of Oxford, and the Intergenerational Centre of the Resolution Foundation.
The Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science (LCDS) is led by Professor Melinda Mills. The Centre’s driving research question asks: How can we harvest and link classic and new types of data, alongside innovative approaches and methods to generate accurate, timely and effective demographic knowledge and predictions to resolve the most challenging demographic problems of our time? They work to develop new ideas within academia, industry and governments.
The Resolution Foundation’s Deputy Chief Executive, Mike Brewer, is Co-Director of Connecting Generations. The Resolution Foundation is an independent think-tank focused on improving the living standards of those on low-to-middle incomes. They work across a wide range of economic and social policy. The Foundation’s established work programme includes: incomes and inequality; jobs, skills and pay; housing, wealth and debt; tax and welfare; public finances and the economy.
The Intergenerational Centre at the Resolution Foundation aims to understand what is driving intergenerational differences in living standards, and how they can be addressed. Part of the Connecting Generations research programme will be to co-produce future Resolution Foundation intergenerational audits.
