News Release

Professorial Fellowships announced

Grant and Award Announcement

Economic & Social Research Council

With the appointment of nine Professorial Fellowships, the ESRC announces today its new scheme that enables some of the UK's best social scientists to research unconstrained by administration and teaching. They will be able to create and evolve their own innovative and groundbreaking research agendas in various areas of the social sciences.

An important aspect of the ESRC's mission is to push forward the boundaries of social science, and we believe that such innovation requires time and space. The Fellows are acknowledged scholarly leaders in their field, and the Fellowship will allow them to pursue their topic with more independence than is offered by conventional funding mechanisms.

The Professorial Fellowship Scheme is an annual competition with fellowships lasting for a maximum of three years. It includes funding for one PhD student appointed by the Fellow and for a research assistant, subject to application, providing the administrative support for the fellow to concentrate entirely on research.

Professor Ian Diamond, Chief Executive of the Economic and Social Research Council, said: "The best researchers are always under pressure to do more teaching and administration. We have set up this scheme in response to demand to free some of the UK's top social scientists to produce excellent research. The quality of the applicants, and of the people we have appointed, shows that this scheme fills a real need in British social science."

The nine Fellows are:

Professor Barbara Adam, School of Social Sciences, Cardiff University, will focus on how the future is lived, known and shaped in practice. Her programme of work will seek to map and relate approaches to the future across key domains of social life and provide a comprehensive theory of the future. Her main research interests are in the area of social and socio-environmental time.

Professor Tony Barnett, School of Development Studies, University of East Anglia, will refine understanding of the social and economic impact of infectious disease in poor countries, in particular HIV/AIDS in Africa, and assist development of better responses to the long-term effects. He is an interdisciplinary social scientist working in substantive areas from irrigation management and rural development, to planning and labour market studies and has many years experience in the Middle East. Focusing on Africa, but with research also done in India and the Former Soviet Union, he has led a major Policy Research Project on the Social and Economic impact of HIV/AIDS.

Professor David Firth, Nuffield College, Oxford, will contribute to the understanding, development and implementation of statistical methods for social science. He is a professor of social statistics in the field of statistical theory and methods in social science. His current research topics include generalised linear models and quasi-likelihood methods, models for contingency tables, log-multiplicative models, and measures of model adequacy.

Professor Miriam Glucksmann, Department of Sociology, University of Essex, will address major changes in the nature of work and its place in contemporary societies, at a time of increasing globalisation and transformation of standard modes of employment. Her broad research interests are in the areas of gender, work and employment; the shifting boundaries between production, distribution and consumption; the interconnections between different forms of social divisions; temporalities and spatialities.

Professor John Hardman Moore, Department of Economics, University of Edinburgh, will address issues such as: Why is it that small adjustments to nominal interest rates by a central bank appear to have such significant effects on the real economy? and Why can there be financial instability, even during periods of monetary stability? He is George Watson's and Daniel Stewart's Professor of Economics, a Fellow of the British Academy, and Leverhulme Research Professor.

Professor David Hendry, Nuffield College, University of Oxford, will investigate the predictive failure of macro-economic forecasting and its centrality to modern economic policy. The applications of his research interests are the UK housing market, money demand and consumers' expenditure.

Professor Donald MacKenzie, Department of Sociology, University of Edinburgh, will focus on broadening the agenda of social science research on financial markets in particular by developing work rooted in sociology.

Dr. Doreen McBarnet, Centre for Socio-Legal Studies, Wolfson College, University of Oxford, aims to investigate the dangers of creative accounting and its relationship to financial reporting in particular how law might be developed to foster a new ethic.

Professor Gerry Stoker, Department of Government, University of Manchester, will enhance debates about governance that have taken place in different disciplines of social science and in distinctive sectors of society and economy.

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EDITORS' NOTES
1. The ESRC is the UK's largest funding agency for research and postgraduate training relating to social and economic issues. It provides independent, high-quality, relevant research to business, the public sector and Government. The ESRC invests more than £76 million every year in social science and at any time is supporting some 2,000 researchers in academic institutions and research policy institutes. It also funds postgraduate training within the social sciences to nurture the researchers of tomorrow. More at http://www.esrc.ac.uk

2. REGARD is the ESRC's database of research. It provides a key source of information on ESRC social science research awards and all associated publications and products. The website can be found at http://www.regard.ac.uk.


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