Fran Bennett

Fran Bennett was a Senior Research Fellow, and is now an Associate Fellow of the Department. She has a particular interest in social security policy, gender issues, and poverty and participation.

She has written extensively on social policy issues for the UK government, NGOs and others. With Prof Jane Millar of the University of Bath, she was specialist advisor to the House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee for its inquiry into universal credit (report published July 2020).

Fran is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences and is currently also a Visiting Fellow at the Institute of Policy Research, University of Bath. She is a member of the policy advisory group of the Women's Budget Group. 

Fran's most recent research involved investigating how Universal Credit affects couples in an ESRC-funded project (ES/R004811/1), led by Prof Jane Millar. She is currently co-editing, with Siobhan Austen and Silvia Avram, a book on the research agenda relating to the management and distribution of financial resources within the household for Edward Elgar.

Research

Fran Bennett's research focuses on:

  • social security policy
  • gender issues, especially in relation to within-household distribution and tax/social security
  • poverty and income distribution.

Her current research involves investigating how Universal Credit affects couples in an ESRC-funded project (ES/R004811/1), led by Prof Jane Millar, University of Bath.

Previously she examined (with others) the interaction between within-household inequalities and policy on tax and benefits in the UK in a project in the ESRC-funded Gender Equality Network (2002-10), and wrote an evidence and policy review on gender and poverty for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation with Prof. Mary Daly, DSPI.

Selected publications

Please note that some links may require subscription access to journals

Fran Bennett selected publications revised July 2022

Expanded publication list

Current students
Previous students

Saltanat Rasulova (supervised jointly with Prof Robert Walker), who is Senior Consultant (Research and Data Collection Methods portfolio), Oxford Public Management, Oxford  

Dalia Ben Galim, who is Director of Policy, Advice and Communications, Gingerbread

Mariann Dosa who was co-founder and head of the School of Public Life, Budapest, and is currently working as a civil servant in the UK.

Rys Farthing (supervised jointly with Prof Robert Walker), who is a policy and charity consultant, who works with clients from Manchester City Council to the All Party Parliamentary Group on Poverty and NGOs such as WATOceans

Madeline Nightingale (supervised jointly with Erzsebet Bukodi), who is a policy analyse at RAND Europe specialising in employment and gender.

News