Kate Andersen

My research explores the intended and unintended consequences of new social security policies. I am especially interested in investigating how government justifications for welfare reforms compare with the everyday realities of affected claimants. My research particularly focuses on how welfare reforms impact people who are already subject to discrimination in society. I find qualitative longitudinal approaches particularly useful for analysing changes to the social security system, and for observing how people experience, manage, and are impacted by, change.

In 2015 I joined the Social Policy and Social Work Department at the University of York as a master's student and went on to complete a PhD which investigated the implications of the conditionality within Universal Credit for women's citizenship. This explored how the new conditionality regime affects mothers' unpaid caring roles, their position in the paid labour market and their agency.

I am currently a Research associate on the Benefit Changes and Larger families project which aims to understand how recent benefit changes, particularly the two-child limit and the benefit cap, affect families with more than two children.