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Professor of Social Policy organises first international Beijing conference on risk

Peter Taylor-Gooby, Professor of Social Policy at the University of Kent, has organised the first major international academic conference in Beijing on the theme of risk.

The conference is titled 'Managing the Social Impacts of Change from a Risk Perspective' and will draw on social science expertise from China and the UK to consider what psychology, sociology, political science, economics and social policy studies have to tell about the way people perceive and assess particular issues as risks, and how they respond to them.

The conference will take place on 15-17 April 2009 and has already attracted the attention of leading international keynote speakers such as: Professor Christopher Hood, All Souls College Oxford and LSE; Professor Jude Howell, LSE; Professor Graham Loomes, University of East Anglia; Professor Jenny Kitzinger, University of Cardiff; and Professor Nick Pidgeon, University of Cardiff.

The Chinese speakers will include: Xing Tong, Dean, School of Public Management, Nanjing University; Xiaojiang Hu, Director of Migration Centre, ISDPP; Xinping Guan, Chair, Department of Social Policy, Nankai University; Tuan Yang, Director, Centre for Social Policy Studies, CASS; Professor Tuan Yang, Director, Centre for Social Policy Studies, CASS; and Professor Xinping Guan, Chair, Department of Social Policy, Nankai University.

Professor Taylor-Gooby, who will also be delivering a keynote speech titled 'New social risks in everyday life', said: 'The agenda of risks facing citizens and government in the modern world is changing rapidly. In their everyday lives, people and organisations respond to the risks they recognise and prioritise as important from their point of view, not to risks as objective facts. This applies to managers of complex systems, policy-makers dealing with disease, population change and planning and those managing business and enterprises or delivering public services like health care, just as much as to ordinary people.

'However, it is only when policy-makers take seriously the range of ways in which people understand and address risk will they develop sustainable solutions in an increasingly plural world.'

Dr Jens O Zinn, Senior Research Fellow at the School of Sociology, Social Policy and Social Research at the University of Kent, and the conference co-ordinator, added: 'This conference will focus on the contribution of social science research to understanding and managing a range of important social risks. There will be two streams: one on the management of change and one on the contribution of social science to the understanding of risk. We will also discuss the current risk issues in China and the UK.'

The conference is supported by: the Social Contexts and Responses to Risk network (SCARR); the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences; Beijing Normal University; Economic and Social Research Council, UK; Research Councils UK; and the University of Kent.

Further information on the conference is available from the SCARR website.

Contact: mediaoffice@kent.ac.uk

Story published at 10:01am 2 May 2008