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'Linking Leeds' Seminar - 13 February 2019

Date
Date
Wednesday 13 February 2019

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In order to help build a richer connection between the academic and policy worlds, the Leeds Social Sciences Institute (LSSI) at the University of Leeds, and the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) have developed a new seminar series: Linking Leeds.

This seminar series will provide an opportunity to hear from both leading Social Scientists at the University of Leeds as well as prominent analysts, strategists and policy makers from the Department for Work and Pensions.

At this event, we will hear from Professor Michael Thomson and Dr Sam Lewis (School of Law), on 'The New Science of Child and Family Policy'.

The seminar will be followed by a 30 minute question and answer session. Lunch will be provided.

If you have any dietary or access requirements, or any further questions about the Linking Leeds seminar series, please contact LSSI Coordinator, Hannah Crow (H.E.Crow@leeds.ac.uk).

 


 

Abstract:

Child and family policy has long been shaped by claims from the life sciences. Such claims and the policies they inform, are shaped by the social and political milieu within which they emerge. Historical distance can make these processes more visible. So, for example, we have seen law and policy exclude women from particular workplaces and working practices on the basis of scientific claims around intellectual ability, brain size, reproductive health, the health of future generations, domestic responsibilities, and so forth. With the unprecedented levels of research funding directed in recent decades into the neurosciences, it is unsurprising that claims from developmental neuroscience are informing government policy. Here, the past is being repeated as neuroscientific claims are inflected by the same gendered biological determinism. In this presentation we acknowledge this, but also identify the potential for contemporary claims to inform a different, more egalitarian, and potentially more effective response to child welfare concerns. We explore this alternative application of current neuroscientific claims assessing the changing fortunes of Sure Start. Further, we argue that emerging evidence from developmental neuroscience and environmental epigenetics challenges the utility and cost effectiveness of some austerity measures which may impact negatively on health and developmental outcomes. This alternative application of the science provokes us to rethink the frameworks within which policy and state responsibility are understood and articulated.