Noel Whiteside
Professor of Comparative Public Policy
Tel: (0)24 765 32173
Email: N.Whiteside@warwick.ac.uk
Room: D0.13
Profile
Noel Whiteside is Professor Emerita of Comparative Public Policy. She is a contemporary historian of social and public policy development with specific interests in labour markets and constructions of social dependency in comparative (largely European) perspective. Her published work focuses on the changing nature of employment, on how this has shaped both welfare rights and categorisations of social dependency, using convention theory as the basis for analysis. This theoretical perspective and its links with the capability approach, as developed by Amartya Sen, formed the foundations of her work within European teams of social scientists under two European FP programmes (EUROCAP and CAPRIGHT).
Recent work (post retirement) has focused on funded pension systems and their governance (leading to evidence submitted to the government’s recent pension review, September 2024) and research on colonial welfare development during the cold war (c. 1948-65). This last is to be published in a forthcoming book on European welfare during the cold war, also in a forthcoming article in La Revue de l’Histoire de la Protection Sociale, in 2025.
Academic Profile
Following her doctorate (University of Liverpool) Noel Whiteside worked as an archivist in The National Archives before being recruited as a lecturer in social policy at Bristol University. She moved to the Department of Sociology at Warwick in 1999 and was appointed to a professorship the following year.
Noel Whiteside has been invited as a visiting Research Fellow at the University of Wisconsin (Madison), the Ecole Normale Superieur at Cachan (Paris), the universities of Sydney , Melbourne and Macquarie (Australia), Columbia University's Institute for Scholars at Reid Hall (Paris) and as a visiting professor at the school for economic and social sciences at the University of Helsinki. She was appointed Zurich Financial Services Fellow in 2000 and Fellow of the Royal Historical Society the following year. She was a member of the Scientific Advisory Board for the Nordforsk programme on Nordic Excellence in Welfare Research (2008-13). She was awarded a Visiting Professorship at the University of Oxford (Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment) in 2014.
Research Interests
Historical perspectives on European labour market policies; Social security; Comparative systems of governance
Research Project
Past research projects have included:
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Paths 2 Work - an interdisciplinary ESRC-funded study of transitions between education and employment in the midlands (UK), wth specific emphasis on the role played by internships, zero-hours contracts and other types of precarious work (PI Professor Kate Purcell)
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Superannuation Research Cluster (in collaboration with Monash University, Melbourne, Australia, funded by CSIRO, Australia): a project examining ways of improving efficiency and social justice in the world of funded pension systems (PI Professor Robert Lindley). This built on earlier research on changing pension systems in Europe under the FP7 programme GUSTO (PI Professor Colin Crouch)
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Income Protection Gaps - a global analysis of widening gaps in household income consequent on premature death / permanent disability of wage earners (at the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment, University of Oxford)
Publications
The following does not include work on administrative histories of government departments, now forming part of the National Archive’s Current Guide, Part 1.
Casual Labour: the Unemployment Question and the Port Transport Industry, 1880-1970, (Oxford University Press, 1985) pp. 324
Co-author, Gordon Phillips.
Bad Times: Unemployment in British Social and Political History (Faber & Faber, 1991) pp. 147
Developments in the British Welfare State, 1939-1951 (HMSO, 1992) pp.180
Co-authors, Andrew Land and Rodney Lowe.
Aux sources du chômage: une comparaison interdisciplinaire France - Grande Bretagne (Editions Belin, Paris, 1994) pp. 467 Co-editors, Malcolm Mansfield, Robert Salais
Governance, Industry and Labour Markets in Britain and France: the modernising state in the mid-twentieth century (Routledge, London, 1998) pp. 295. Co-editor, Robert Salais
Pension Security in the 21st Century: redrawing the public-private divide (OUP, Oxford, autumn 2003 and 2005) Co-editor, Gordon Clark
Britain’s Pensions Crisis: history and policy (British Academy / Oxford University Press, 2006) Co-editors Hugh Pemberton, Pat Thane
Transforming European Employment Policy: labour market transitions and the promotion of capability (Elgar 2012) Co-editors Robert Salais and Ralf Rogowski
Governing Pension Fund Capitalism in Times of Uncertainty special issue Global Social Policy, 12, 3, (2012) Co-editors Mitchell Orenstein and Bernhard Ebbinghaus