University of Oxford
Fran Bennett was a Senior Research Fellow, and is now an Associate Fellow, at the Department of Social Policy and Intervention at the University of Oxford. She has a particular interest in social security policy, gender issues, and poverty, income distribution and participation.
She is also an independent consultant, and has written extensively on social policy issues for the UK government, NGOs and others. She is a member of the UK team of independent experts led by Prof Jonathan Bradshaw in the European Social Policy Network for the European Commission. With Prof Jane Millar of the University of Bath, she was specialist advisor to the House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee for its inquiry into universal credit (report published July 2020).
Fran is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences and is currently also a Visiting Fellow at the Institute of Policy Research, University of Bath. She is a member of the policy advisory group of the Women’s Budget Group.
Fran Bennett’s research focuses on social security policy, gender issues (especially in relation to within-household distribution and tax/social security), and poverty. Her current research involves investigating how Universal Credit affects couples in an ESRC-funded project (ES/R004811/1), led by Prof Jane Millar, University of Bath. She is co-editing, with Siobhan Austen and Silvia Avram, a book on the research agenda relating to financial resources within the household for Edward Elgar.