Social Science and Public Policy

Richard Freeman

postdoctoral fellows

Christophe Dubois completed his PhD on restorative justice at the University of Liege, Belgium. He teaches at ICHEC Brussels Management School and held a postdoc fellowship here in the Europa Institute and the Institute of Governance in 2009-2010. - website

Stefanie Schmachtel completed her PhD in the Department of Psychology, University of Copenhagen. She is now designing a method of practice-based comparison for a new project on local governance in education. - website

Katherine Smith holds an ESRC/MRC Fellowship in the Global Public Health Unit and is working on the ways research connects with policy. - website

Jen Smith-Merry worked on the KNOWandPOL project 2007-2011. She was formerly Research Fellow at the Australian Health Policy Institute, and is now Senior Lecturer in Qualitative Health Research at the University of Sydney - website

Dawit Wondimagegn is a psychiatrist working in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. He spent 3 months in Edinburgh at the end of 2008, as Visiting Research Fellow at the Centre of African Studies. - website

current doctoral students

Rosie Anderson worked for the BBC and the Royal Society of Arts, and then as Policy and Research Manager for Community Matters in London. She holds a Principal's Career Development Scholarship, and is researching the production and processing of emotion in public policy. She is Associate Fellow at the Third Sector Research Centre in Birmingham. - website

Olga Dimova volunteered in various adult and child care settings while completing pre-medical qualifications in Charlotte, North Carolina. She is now working on the politics of child mental health. - website

Oliver Escobar is another PCDS scholar, researching the work of professional 'engagers' in public participation processes. He is a former Public Engagement fellow at Edinburgh Beltane and is currently Project Officer for the University's Public Policy Network. - website

Martina Karels studied and worked in theatre in New York, and is now working on the production and performance of public memory in respect of the site at Ground Zero. - website

Darcy Leigh is investigating the ways Inuit-state relations are being engaged, resisted and rearticulated in the education politics of Canada’s eastern Arctic. - website

Victoria Loughlan is researching the construction of space in peace-building, drawing on fieldwork in East Timor. - website

Natalie Papanastasiou is writing about the emergence and development of Academies in English schools policy. - website

Mabutho Shangase worked in the Department of Health in Pretoria and then at the National Youth Commission before moving to the Independent Development Trust. He is now working on ways of conceptualising policy making in South Africa. - website

Arno Simons is Research Associate in the Innovation in Governance Research Group at the Technische Universität in Berlin, and is interested in the role of documents in the construction of political reality - website

Claire Smerdon lives in Temagami, Northern Ontario, where she has restored a railway station. She is writing about the changing conception of wilderness in Canadian identity, using material from pre- and post-war school books. - website

Catherine-Rose Stocks-Rankin is working on gender issues in the long-term care of older people in Scotland, focusing on the contract as a mediating device. - website

Jonathan Suk is currently Scientific Officer at the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) and is researching the international governance of infectious disease. - website

former doctoral students

Nur Abdelkhaliq studied the European Commission's implementation of the external dimension of immigration policy. In 2009-2010, she was Research Assistant on the EC-funded project 'Multilateralism and the EU in the Contemporary Global Order (MERCURY)'. - website

Kate Bilton worked on gender mainstreaming and the Scottish Executive and is now working at the Home Office in London.

Viola Burau researched the occupational governance of nursing in Britain and Germany and is now Associate Professor of Public Policy, University of Aarhus, Denmark. - website

Rosalind Cavaghan is a former consultant who developed the concept of gender knowledge to account for different patterns of gender mainstreaming in Europe. She was also a visiting scholar in Gender and Globalization at Humboldt University, Berlin. - website

Alistair Hunter wrote about the return migration of workers from Algeria and Senegal who have settled in Paris. He is currently Research Fellow on a project investigating the role of the social sciences in shaping public understanding of immigrant integration. - website

Zoe Keddie completed her PhD on communication patterns and the domestication of information technology in general practice while working at the Audit Commission in London.

Yu-Kang Lee wrote about the Third Way and is now Assistant Professor at National Sun Yat-sen University, Taiwan.

Jo Maybin worked previously as a social affairs analyst for BBC News and is now Fellow in health policy at the King's Fund in London. She held a Bernard Crick Fellowship at Edinburgh, where her doctoral research analysed ways of knowing in policy work in England's Department of Health. - website

Andrew McFadyen is a journalist and former Head of Communications for the Scottish Labour Party. His doctoral thesis assessed Donald Dewar's role in Scottish devolution.

Evgeniya Plotnikova worked at research centres in Perm and Moscow, and completed an internship at the ILO in Geneva. Her doctoral research investigated the role of bilateral agreements in international staff recruitment to the NHS. She is now Research Fellow in the Global Public Health Unit at Edinburgh. - website

Ellen Stewart studied young adults' participation in health care decision making in Scotland, while also working on a government-funded evaluation of elections to Health Boards. - website

Betsy Super wrote about Democratic Party workers in Boston, and is now Fellow and Associate Director, International Programs at the American Political Science Association.

Claire Sutherland wrote about neo-nationalist ideology in Scotland and Bavaria and now teaches Politics at the University of Manchester.