ESRC Society Today

Brenda Boardman leads the Demand Reduction theme of the UK Energy and Resources Centre, which is co-funded by the ESRC. She also heads the Lower Carbon Futures team at the University of Oxford's Environmental Change Institute (ECI)

Phil Brown is a Professor in the School of Social Sciences at Cardiff University, where he is currently researching the knowledge economy

Martin Bulmer is Professor of Sociology at the University of Surrey in Guildford, where he is also Director of the ESRC's Question Bank (Qb), an online open access resource. He also runs the ESRC-funded Survey Link Scheme, another resource which aims to make students and teachers of social science methodology more aware of the issues that may arise in the survey fieldwork carried out by professional social survey organisations.

Diana Burman recently won the Michael Young Prize, awarded jointly by the ESRC and the Michael Young Foundation, for her research on new methods of teaching deaf children how to read. She is currently based at Oxford University’s Department of Educational Studies, where she is in receipt of a Nuffield Foundation grant

John Curtice is Professor of Politics at the University of Strathclyde, and a popular media pundit at election time. He is involved in two ESRC-funded research programmes, Identities and Social Action and e-Society. He is also co-director of the Centre for Research into Elections and Social Trends (CREST)

Bill Durodié is senior lecturer in Risk and Corporate Security at Cranfield University. His main research is into the causes and consequences of our contemporary consciousness of risk

Fred Halliday is Professor of International Relations, London School of Economics. His Middle East specialism is complemented by studies on the theory of international relations, and in particular on the role of social change and revolutions in international politics

Dick Hobbs is known for his research on working class crime and entrepreneurship, the night-time economy and on alcohol-related behaviour. Earlier this year he gave a presentation with Stephen Green, the Chief Constable of Nottingham, to the Home Affairs Select Committee on 24-hour licensing

Roger Jowell co-founded and directs the European Social Survey (ESS) which has just won the Descartes Prize. This award is given annually for excellence in science, and until now has never been won by a social science project. He also set up the National Centre for Social Research (NatCen)

Richard Layard is founder of the LSE Centre for Economic Performance, which covers most areas of economic policy and is funded by the ESRC. His current research on 'happiness' aims to achieve a unified understanding of the insights of economics, psychology, neuroscience and philosophy

Kevin Morgan is Professor of European Regional Development at Cardiff University. His recent ESRC-funded research on school meals in the UK and Italy attracted much media attention. He is now applying the same methodology to other areas of 'the public plate', including prison and hospital food.

Michael Naughton was a runner-up in the Michael Young Prize, for his work on miscarriages of justice. He worked as an engineer until he suffered an industrial injury to his back. He then studied for a degree in Sociology at the University of Bristol, where he also took his PhD. He currently lectures in the School of Law and the Department of Sociology at Bristol.

Andy Neely is Chairman of the Centre for Business Peformance at Cranfield University, where he specialises in Operations Management, and Deputy Director of the ESRC's Advanced Institute for Management Research (AIM)

Ken Peattie heads the Cardiff-based ESRC funded research centre known as BRASS which focuses on business relationship as the means to create greater understanding of the issues of sustainability, accountability and social responsiveness in the corporate sector

Lydia Plowman is Reader in the Institute of Education and Director of Research Development at the University of Stirling. She is involved in two ESRC-funded research programmes - the Teaching and Learning Research Programme (TLRP) and e-Society

Andrew Pollard is Director of the ESRC's Teaching and Learning Programme (TLRP). He was a salesman for his family's printing business before training as a teacher, and later did a PhD in the Sociology of Education. He is currently based at the Institute of Education, University of London.

Steve Rayner spent over two decades in the US as a researcher and returned to the UK to head the Science in Society programme. The programme's aim is to explore the rapidly changing relations between science and the wider society

Michelle Ryan was a runner-up in the Michael Young Prize, for her work on ‘the glass cliff’ - which looks at what happens to women in the workplace once they have broken through the glass ceiling. She grew up in Canberra, and is currently an Academic Fellow in the Department of Psychology at the University of Exeter.

Fiona Steele has become the youngest ever female Fellow to be elected to the British Academy, a national body for humanities and social sciences. Fiona Steele, aged 38, is Professor of Social Statistics at Bristol University's Graduate School of Education.

Joyce Tait is Director of the ESRC's Innogen Centre (Innovation in Genomics). This is an interdisciplinary programme which brings together social scientists, technology and policy analysts, economists and lawyers to study the far-reaching social and economic implications of advances in the life sciences

Fiona Williams is Director of CAVA, the ESRC Care, Values and the Future of Welfare Research Group centred at Leeds University. She has written widely on issues of gender, 'race', ethnicity and class in relation to social policy

Bencie Woll is Director of the new ESRC-funded Centre for Deafness, Cognition and Language (DCAL)