University of Kent

Biographical Details

Lavinia Mitton came to the School from the London School of Economics, where she was a research student. Her Ph.D. was titled 'The Objectives and Outcomes of Means Testing under the British Welfare State', which examined effectiveness of means-testing policy from the 1960s to the 1990s. She has also worked as a researcher at the Department of Applied Economics at the University of Cambridge.

 

Research

General research interests

My main area of research are household incomes, social security policies and family finances. I have a particular interest in using large-scale surveys such as the Family Resources Survey.

The research projects I have recently involved in are on UK financial exclusion (for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation); social security benefit fraud (for the Department of Work and Pensions); encouraging labour market participation among 50-64 years olds (for the Department of Work and Pensions); and Black Africans in the UK (funded by the ESRC).

Research Supervision

I am very interested to hear from prospective students who want to focus on:

• Analysis of social security policies (including tax credits and pensions) in a British or international context
• Personal finance and financial exclusion
• The history of social policy

 

Teaching

I mainly teach on the welfare state in Britain in general, and on poverty and social security in particular.

• Undergraduate Stage 2: SO601 'Welfare in Modern Britain' (course convenor);
• SO575 'Poverty, inequality and social security' (course convenor) not available 2007/2008.
• Postgraduate: contributions to faculty research training programme on qualitative and quantitative research methods.

 

Publications

• Taylor-Gooby, P. and Mitton, L.. (Forthcoming 2008). ‘Much Noise, Little Progress: The UK Experience of Privatization’  In Fragmented Welfare Regimes: The Public-Private Dichotomy in Social Policy, Daniel Béland and Brian Gran (eds.). Palgrave Macmillan.
• Aspinall P.J. & Mitton L. (2008) 'Kinds of people' and equality monitoring in the UK. Policy & Politics 36(1) 55-74
• Aspinall P.J. & Mitton L. (2008) 'Operationalising 'sexual orientation' in routine data collection and equality monitoring in the UK'. Culture, Health & Sexuality, 10(01), pp. 57 - 72.
• Mitton, L. (2007) ‘The Welfare System of Great Britain’.(2007) In: Europäische Wohlfahrtssysteme [European Welfare Systems], Klaus Schubert, Simon Hegelich, Ursula Bazant (eds.) German publisher: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, Wiesbaden
• Mitton, L. (2007) Means-Tested Higher Education? The University Bursary Mess. Journal of Further and Higher Education, 31(4) 373-383
• Aspinall P.J. & Mitton, L. (2007) Are English local authorities' practices on housing and council tax benefit administration meeting race equality requirements? Critical Social Policy  27(3) 381-414.
• Mitton, L. and Hull, C., (2007) ‘The Information, Advice and Guidance Needs of Older Workers'.Social Policy & Society  5(4) 541-550
• Mitton, L. (2001), The Victorian Hospital, Shire Publications
• Mitton, L., H. Sutherland and M. Weeks (2000) ‘Introduction’. In Microsimulation Modelling for Policy Analysis: Challenges and Innovations, L. Mitton, H. Sutherland and M. Weeks (eds.), Cambridge University Press.