University historian appointed to governmental advisory body
The DWP office in Quarry House, Leeds - one of several across the country. Photo courtesy of Chemical Engineer, Wikimedia Commons.
A leading authority on the history of the welfare state is to join an advisory body for the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).
Dr Eve Worth, Lecturer in Modern British History at the University of Exeter, will sit on the Methods Advisory Group alongside other leading humanities and social sciences scholars.
The group works to ensure that analysts and scientists at the DWP are able to draw from the latest scientific, technical, and analytical approaches when providing evidence to support policy and delivery decisions.
Dr Worth’s expertise in oral history and participatory methods were viewed as a major benefit to the DWP as it seeks to engage with more people about its services in the future.
“As a researcher, I am very interested in the workings of the DWP,” said Dr Worth, of the Department of Archaeology and History at Exeter. “And my background is an interdisciplinary one, at the boundaries of history and sociology, so it will be great to be able to bring together these aspects in joining this group.
“The impetus for this group is clear, and I am looking forward to contributing fully to it and hopefully, together, we can help to improve policy in the future.”
Dr Worth was chosen following an intense recruitment process, and she will now sit on the group for the next three years, attending regular meetings in London to provide advice to staff.
The first of these has already been held, ‘with a view to using innovative methodological approaches to evaluating policy design and outcomes. Dr Worth will also have an opportunity to visit the department’s archive and obtain an insight into how policy has been developed in the past.
Dr Worth is a social and women’s historian specialising in the period since 1945, and in particular, the subject of social mobility. Her first book, The Welfare State Generation: Women, Agency and Class in Britain since 1945, was published by Bloomsbury in 2022.
“The University can be rightly proud that Eve has been chosen to represent History on this advisory body,” said Professor Helen Berry, Deputy Pro Vice-Chancellor for the Faculty of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences. “It demonstrates the value that historical research of the highest quality can bring to good government and will I hope enable Eve to make a significant impact on contemporary policy formation.”
