Making the Case for the Social Sciences

For further details of the launch of the first in the new Academy series of booklets, click here. To view a video of the launch presentations and panel discussion, visit: http://vimeo.com/9377129

To download the report as a pdf click here.

To read the report in THE click here.

Work and Wellbeing Conference

28th April 2010

Unilever House, 100 Victoria Embankment,

London EC4Y 0DY (directions)

Sponsored by SAGE and Unilever PLC, a major day conference for employers, operations managers, HR professionals and the academic community on current issues in work and wellbeing, viewed over the course of the traditional working life, from both employer and employee perspectives.

Good health enables human flourishing and fulfilment. Given the amount of time spent at work, the workplace is central to physical and psychological health, as well as life satisfaction. As the costs of ill health continue to rise, workplace health has become an issue that employers can no longer afford to ignore.

This conference brings together all the latest thinking on current issues in work and wellbeing, from both academic and practioner perspectives.

Programme Click Here to download a Word version of this programme and here for a booking form or visit the Events Page to book online.

10.00 Registration and Coffee

10.30 Welcome to the conference - Stephen Anderson, Executive Director, Academy of Social Sciences

Session Chair: TBA

10:40 The importance of the Health and Well Being Agenda – An Overview of the link between Work and Health : Professor Cary L Cooper CBE AcSS, Chair of Council, Academy of Social Sciences and Pro Vice Chancellor (External Relations) and Distinguished Professor of Organizational Psychology and Health, Lancaster University

11.10 Workplace Health and the Law – Current Issues : Simon Ost, Partner, Employment Practice, Hammonds LLP, Manchester

11.40 Refreshment Break

12.00 The Organisational Costs of Mental Ill-Health : Mike Parsonage, Senior Policy Advisor, Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health, London

12.30 The Issue of Bullying in the Workplace : Professor Charlotte Rayner, Professor of Human Resource Management Portsmouth Business School, University of Portsmouth

13.00 Lunch

Session Chair: TBA

14.00 What people want from work – the changing needs and attitudes to work at different life stages : Professor Susan Cartwright, Professor of Organizational Psychology and Well Being, Director of Centre for Organizational Health and Well-Being, Lancaster University

14.30 The Value of Older Workers :  Mr David Fairhurst, Senior Vice President, Chief People Officer, McDonald's UK & Northern Europe

15.00 Health Promotion in the Workplace : Dr John Cooper, Head of Corporate Occupational Health, Unilever PLC

15.30 Health and Worklessness : Professor Dame Carol Black DBE, FRCP, FMedSci. Director for Health and Work, DWP, Chair of the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges and Chair of the Nuffield Trust  

16.00 Discussion

16:30 Close & Tea

Click Here to download a booking form or visit the Events page to book online.

Myths and Realities:

Series of Public Lectures and Discussions

The most recent lecture in this highly successful series (held jointly with the British Library and the Social Research Association) took place on 9 March on the topic: Are we what we eat? A report will appear here soon.  

Podcasts and slide presentations from the first three in the series are available on the British Library website. Click Here to access the links.

Crime and Punishment in the 21st Century

On 8 February,the third event in the Myths and Realities joint series at the British Library attracted a large audience to hear Professors Mike Hough and Ian Loader challenge some of the everyday thinking and lurid headlines we have come to see so frequently and which make developing a sensible and effective crime policy increasingly difficult.

Professor Jon Silverman of the University of Bedfordshire chaired a lively debate, which opened when Professor Hough from the Institute for Criminal Policy Research at King’s College, London asked why there is a mismatch between the public perception and actual crime trends. Despite the downward trend over the last twenty years in crime that people report in the British Crime Survey, many think that crime in on the rise nationally - whilst simultaneously feeling that it is going down in their locality. Both the media and politicians foster this misunderstanding by their reporting of events and responses to them. This distrust in justice needs to be tackled.

Professor Loader of the Centre for Criminology at the University of Oxford took this further by showing how the political consensus of twenty-five years ago had been destroyed. “Liberal elitism” was characterised by a wish to balance order and decency, to forge expert consensus on criminological policy and to manage public opinion when it challenged this. However, since Mrs Thatcher’s premiership, crime had become a key battleground of electoral politics; it had “hotted up” as it had taken an emotive and populist turn. He suggested we need to see a cooling down – was a NICE for criminal justice a way forward? Certainly we needed to build a deliberative politics of crime.

The third speaker, Lindsey Poole spoke from the experience of running the Thames Valley Partnership. She contrasted the policy approach which tended to be ‘top down’ with the reality of delivering many very different and frequently changing programmes on the ground - often with limited resources.  Like Alice in Wonderland the same people kept appearing in different meetings wearing different hats as local groups aimed to engage different sections of the community and public sector in delivering diverse services.

The lively discussion showed that the power of the media is indeed strong and much of the politicians’ rhetoric leaves the public uncertain who or what to believe - which cannot be a good basis to develop the rational and effective policy on crime that many of us want.