social policy

Topic description and stories

Major new policy school at Cambridge set to advance ‘good growth’

03 Mar 2025

The Bennett School of Public Policy opens this autumn, and is already leading work on two of the most pressing policy problems of our time...

New Cambridge institute to tackle policy challenges in our age of disruption

16 Apr 2018

The Bennett Institute for Public Policy will address emerging global patterns of inequality and social unrest by offering a unique combination of...

“Little robots”: behind the scenes at an academy school

11 Apr 2018

New research from the Faculty of Education lifts the lid on an influential academy school, and finds an authoritarian system that reproduces race and...

Dinner time in St Pancras Workhouse, London, 1911. Workhouses, established under the Poor Law Amendment Act, were part of a Victorian programme that cut universal welfare support and stigmatised many poor people as “unproductive”.

Cutting welfare to protect the economy ignores lessons of history, researchers claim

02 Dec 2016

Amid ongoing welfare cuts, researchers argue that investment in health and social care have been integral to British economic success since 1600.

Screenshot of footage from a police body-worn camera

Body-worn cameras associated with increased assaults against police, and increase in use-of-force if officers choose when to activate cameras

17 May 2016

Preliminary results from eight UK and US police forces reveal rates of assault against officers are 15% higher when they use body-worn cameras. The...

Areas of Britain most affected by ‘bedroom tax’ are hardest to downsize in, research finds

17 Dec 2015

Research commissioned by government following housing benefit reforms finds increase in tenants self-selecting to downsize, but the areas hardest hit...

A quarter of young people in the UK have experienced ‘unsafe’ homelessness, finds study

06 Jul 2015

A new study finds the numbers of young people being accommodated by local authorities or homeless services across the UK to be over three times...

Screenshots from TV report on the original Milwaukee Domestic Violence Experiment that took place in 1987-88

Mandatory arrest in domestic violence call-outs causes early death in victims

03 Mar 2014

Cambridge criminologist follows up on landmark US domestic violence arrest experiment and finds that black victims who had partners arrested rather...

India in the Global Age

10 Sep 2012

An India Cambridge 'summit' will take place on Monday 10 September at the Taj Mahal Hotel, New Delhi, to coincide with the Vice-Chancellor's visit to...

The Idea of the University

10 Oct 2011

The idea of the university and the roles assigned to universities in the 21st Century will be the subject of a lecture series beginning in Cambridge...