CASASP Members
Professor Michael Noble (Director)
Professor of Social Policy, Department of Social Policy and Intervention (DSPI), University of Oxford. Director of the Centre for the Analysis of South African Social Policy and Director of the Social Disadvantage Research Centre in the Oxford Institute of Social Policy (OISP) at the University of Oxford. He has worked as a social welfare lawyer in a community work/welfare rights project. He has been an advisor to the UK Government on small area indicators of poverty and deprivation. He is currently working with the South African Government's Department of Social Development to develop the evidence base for pro-poor policy. His major research interests are in the areas of poverty and social exclusion and income maintenance policy.
Dr Gemma Wright (Deputy Director)
Senior Research Fellow, OISP, University of Oxford and Deputy Director of CASASP. Her areas of interest include definitions and measurement of poverty and social exclusion, small area level analysis of deprivation, and social security policy. Her current research focuses on child poverty and on tax and benefit microsimulation in South Africa.
Mr David McLennan (Deputy Director)
Senior Research Fellow, OISP, University of Oxford. His interests lie primarily in the fields of small area poverty and deprivation. He has a special interest in the relationships between deprivation, spatial inequality and crime.
Dr Helen Barnes
Research Fellow, OISP, University of Oxford. Her areas of interest include definition and measurement of poverty, particularly child poverty, construction of small area indices of multiple deprivation, and analysis of take-up of social grants.
Dr Rebecca Surender
University Lecturer in Social Policy, DSPI, University of Oxford. She teaches on the MSc/M.Phil in Comparative Social Policy degree (with particular responsibility for teaching social policy, health policy and qualitative research methods) as well as on the undergraduate PPE course, and she supervises doctoral students. She was a founding member of CASASP. Her research interests have primarily been in the area of health policy and medical sociology. Recent CASASP research studies she has led include an assessment of the implementation of the child support grant, an analysis of recent poverty alleviation income generation projects, and a qualitative study on the attitudes of benefit recipients to employment, labour activation strategies and social grants.Professor Robert van Niekerk (CASASP Associate)
Senior Research Associate, DSPI, University of Oxford and Associate Professor of Social Policy, Rhodes University. He is interested in the institutional history and understandings of health and welfare reform in South Africa. He is also interested in social policy in a post-apartheid South Africa, particularly anti-poverty polices and the factors which account for success and failure in policy implementation.
Dr Phakama Ntshongwana (CASASP Associate)
Director of Missionvale Campus, Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University.
Mr David Avenell (CASASP Associate)
GIS consultant, with particular involvement in the creation of a new small area statistical geography - datazones - for South Africa.
Dr Phil Davies (CASASP Associate)
Director of Oxford Evidentia specialising in evidence based policy making. His special research interests are in the field of health policy. He has worked at the heart of government in the UK, including the Cabinet Office, the Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit, and HM Treasury. He has also advised governments in other countries, as well as global agencies such as the United Nations, the European Commission, and the African Union Commission.
Dr Chris Dibben (CASASP Associate)
Senior Research Associate, DSPI, University of Oxford and Reader at the University of St Andrews. His areas of interest include health inequalities, spatial aspects of poverty and deprivation, and methodological aspects of poverty measurement.
Dr Lucie Cluver (CASASP Associate)
Departmental Lecturer in Evidence Based Social Intervention, DSPI, University of Oxford. Her research interests focus on child well-being in South Africa, especially child poverty, and mental health and educational outcomes of orphans and vulnerable children.