The University of Sheffield
The University of Sheffield was named UK University of the Year in the 2011 Times Higher Education Awards. The University is among the top ten in the Russell Group, the association of leading UK research intensive universities, according to the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise (RAE). Forty-one out of the University’s 49 submissions had 50% or more of their work assessed as world leading or internationally excellent in terms of originality, significance and rigour.
Our research partners and clients include Boeing, Rolls Royce, Unilever, Boots, AstraZeneca, GSK, ICI, Slazenger as well as UK and overseas government agencies and charitable foundations. Our academic partners include leading universities around the world. International partnerships include Worldwide Universities Network (USA, Europe and China) and our partnership with Leeds and York Universities (the White Rose Consortium) has combined research power greater than that of either Oxford or Cambridge. The University of Sheffield has 183 live projects in FP7 and 13 currently in negotiation, spanning all funding instruments and including coordinator status. Research is supported by experienced professional staff with a dedicated European Finance office taking financial oversight of all FP7 projects.
The Department of Sociological Studies maintains an active and wide-ranging research programme across all these fields with a distinctive emphasis on applied and policy-related research underpinned by sociological theory. The department has an established reputation for research that is interdisciplinary in nature and international in scope. It is committed to undertaking work that will help develop theory, advance methodology, inform policy, and improve professional practice. The department has an excellent record of securing external research funding. It also gives a high priority to disseminating the results of research, both within the academic community and among policy-makers and potential end-users, as witnessed by its impressive and consistent output of high quality publications.
The strong sociological research base ensures high-quality teaching and supervision, and also means that students are kept up-to-date with established as well as emerging fields of social inquiry. The department has long-standing links with colleagues in departments across the University of Sheffield, an extensive range of research contacts with other UK universities and outside agencies such as local authorities, the probation service, government departments and the European Union. On the international front, the department has links with research institutions in Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Finland, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, Ireland, Israel, the Netherlands, New Zealand and the USA. In the recent Research Assessment Exercise (2008) overall 95% of our research was rated as of international standard, including 45% was rated as internationally excellent and 20% as world-class. This makes the department a top-ten research department in its field, consolidating our previous excellent rating (Grade 5) in the previous Research Assessment Exercise.
Personnel involved in the project
Alan Walker – Professor of Social Policy and Social Gerontology and Director of the New Dynamics of Ageing Programme, and Scientific Coordinator for MOPACT
Juliet Craig – Senior Research Manager and Administrative Coordinator for MOPACT
Dave Neary – Research Associate
Main tasks attributed to them in the project
The University of Sheffield is a partner to Active and healthy ageing as an asset, leads on dissemination activities and is Coordinator of the project.
Short profile and previous relevant experience
Alan Walker is a gerontologist of world renown; in 2011 he was recipient of the first IAGG European Region Medal for Advances in Gerontology and Geriatrics in the Social and Behavioural Sciences and was recently made a Fellow of the British Academy. He has contributed actively to European policies in the ageing field since he Chaired the European Observatory on Social and Economic Policies and Older People in the early 1990’s. He has coordinated FP6 and FP7 projects since 2002, including the European Forum on Population Ageing Research, ERA-AGE 1 and 2 and FUTURAGE. He has published more than 30 books in the fields of ageing and social policy, more than 200 reports and monographs and over 300 scientific papers.
As well as a leading scientist Alan Walker has direct hands-on experience of social innovations in the UK, such as the Disability Alliance. Alan Walker and Juliet Craig recently oversaw the successful delivery of the Road Map for European Ageing Research for the FUTURAGE project and also coordinate ERA-AGE 2, the European Research Area in Ageing. USFD’s European Framework Research Finance department is highly experienced in Coordination level financial management for FP projects, including, among others ERA-AGE (FP6), ERA-AGE 2 (FP7) and FUTURAGE (FP7).
David Neary is a social policy analyst who joined the University of Sheffield in 2013 to work with Professor Walker on social innovation and ageing projects. He has previously worked on various projects over a 15 year career in academia including systematic reviews of Men in Sheds and other forms of similar intervention aimed at older men with Professor Chris Dowrick; a systematic review of the relationships between crime and the fear of crime with health with Professor Margaret Whitehead and a series of public health reports on Cumbria for Professor John Ashton when he was Director of Public Health for Cumbria. He was awarded his PhD by the University of Manchester in 2003 for his thesis on the Low Pay Commission and the introduction of the national minimum wage in the UK. This followed successfully completing a Masters of Arts in Social Policy (Dist) and a Bachelor’s degree specialising in social policy from the same institution.