Group members
We bring together expertise on families and relationships across the Faculty of Social Sciences and Law. We draw members from a diverse range of disciplines, including (but not limited to) Social Policy, Social Work, Law, Sociology and Politics, Social and Community Medicine, and Education.
Group leads
Dr Timothy M Fowler, School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies
Research interests: parental rights, and particularly whether parents have rights to send their children to religious schools; the ethics of intergenerational relations, including the rights of parents, children’s place in democracy and the obligations of current generations to future generations.
Dr Vicky Sharley, School for Policy Studies
Research interests: early child care and education, child protection, interprofessional relationships, and international social work.
Group members
Dr William Baker, School of Education
Research interests: parenting; parental beliefs and values; educational inequalities; poverty and food insecurity.
Mr Harry Benson, School for Policy Studies
Research interests: marriage and cohabitation; psychology of commitment; family policy; the influence of union formation and dissolution on family outcomes.
Dr Giles M Birchley, Bristol Medical School
Research interests: ethical and legal aspects of healthcare decision-making for and by children and young people; Children’s Medical Tourism.
Dr Mim A Cartwright, School for Policy Studies
Research interests:
Mrs Donna L Crower-Urbaniak, University of Bristol Law School
Research interests:
Prof Esther Dermott, School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies
Research interests: families, parenting, fathers, intimacy, poverty, inequality and gender.
Dr Peter R Dunne, University of Bristol Law School
Research interests: family law, particularly LGBTI family rights and families within EU law.
Mr William J G Hardy, School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies
Research interests:
Prof Emma Hitchings, University of Bristol Law School
Research interests: family law and, in particular, financial provision on divorce.
Ms Josie K Horton, School for Policy Studies
Research interests: families; fatherhood; work-life balance; gender division of care and the mental load; family policies, particularly in relation to promoting active fatherhood.
Prof Jonathan C S Ives, Bristol Medical School
Research interests: fathers and fatherhood; concepts of ‘good’ parenting; parental rights and decision making for healthcare and research.
Mr Matthew Northcote, School for Policy Studies
Research interests: the changes to the physical activity of household members after the arrival of a new baby.
Miss Hilda A Owii, School for Policy Studies
Research interests: long term care in Africa- meanings, current realities, and aspirations for care futures; life course influences on later life experiences and placing; intergenerational dynamics in families; decolonizing knowledge production on Africa.
Dr Anna Pease, Bristol Medical School
Research interests: preventing sudden and unexpected death in infancy and childhood; health inequalities; behavioural change; parenting, especially in families impacted by poverty; coproduction; intervention design; implementation and evaluation; realist evaluation and innovative trial design.
Dr Maud M Perrier, School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies
Research interests: feminist theory and pedagogy, emotions and contemporary families, using psychosocial and arts based methodologies such as collective biography.
Mr Joel Nathan Price, School for Policy Studies
Research interests: child and family social work; involuntary child protection assessment; voice of the child; voice of the parent; child protection across the Welsh context; Welsh context of social work; social work.
Dr Jessica Roy, School for Policy Studies
Research interests: children's rights; child safeguarding; child protection; social work with children and families; risk assessment and decision making; domestic violence and abuse; parental substance misuse; and the construction of childhood.
Mrs Florie Schmits, School for Policy Studies
Research interests: children’s social care; foster care; decision making in social work; siblings in care.
Dr Gemma M Short, University of Bristol Law School
Research interests:
Dr Fiona M Spotswood, University of Bristol Business School
Research interests: mothering and active leisure, contexts of exclusion and experiences of inclusion.
Dr Jo C Staines, School for Policy Studies
Research interests: youth justice, including alternatives to custody; adolescent foster care; the interface between the criminal justice and care systems; the criminalisation of children and childhood; and restorative justice interventions.
Dr Jon P Symonds, School for Policy Studies
Research interests: understanding and improving practice in professional encounters; the recruitment of fathers to parenting programmes; families, parenting and fatherhood, and practitioner engagement skills.
Mrs Helen J Thomas-Hughes, Cabot Institute for the Environment
Research interests:
Dr Afua Twum-Danso Imoh, School for Policy Studies
Research interests: children's rights, social norms and their implications for children's rights, social change and its impact on children's lives, parent-child relationships, child rearing practices, global north vs. south binary and its implications for studying childhoods. Countries of focus: Ghana, Nigeria.
Research interests: the role that socialisation within family and, in particular, siblings, plays in influencing children’s outcomes in later life - in doing so, I seek to illuminate the reasons gender inequalities persist across generations.
Mr Fengqiang Wang, School for Policy Studies
Research interests: families, parents and children, sexuality and gender, LGBTQ+, marriages, and contemporary China.
Miss Zilu Wang, School for Policy Studies
Research interests:
Prof Debbie L Watson, School for Policy Studies
Research interests: children's wellbeing and identities in diverse contexts and forms and the interactions between family wellbeing and childhood experiences- particularly for children growing up in impoverished and challenging contexts.
Mrs Dinithi Nisanka Wijedasa, School for Policy Studies
Research interests: the care system and minority ethnic children; foster care and adoption services.
Dr Junko Yamashita, School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies
Research interests: the intersection of social policy, sociology and gender studies, using comparative analysis of East Asian and European welfare states.