Missed one of our seminars? You can still catch up anytime on the Department's YouTube channel. Our seminar series bring top researchers from around the University and the world to talk about their work and share the latest thinking on pressing issues.

Africa’s adolescent cohort is growing fast. Can parenting support help? 🔗 Read Professor Lucie Cluver's blog for Bond UK calling for governments and NGOs to invest and scale-up:

Africa’s adolescent cohort is growing fast. Can parenting support help? | Bond

Africa’s adolescent population is likely to reach almost half a billion by 2050 – and as it increases, so too does the need for scalable, evidence-based approaches to parenting support.

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Congratulations to Dr Tobias Schillings on being awarded a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship for ‘Reforming Solidarity: Healthcare Expansion and Welfare Legitimacy in the Global South' which explores how healthcare reform reshapes solidarity, state responsibility, and inequality across societies.

❓Why does knowing who is likely to vote for a political party often tells us little about that party’s overall electoral success?  New research from DSPI's Professor Tim Vlandas and @University of York’s @Professor Daphne Halikiopoulou explores this key challenge in contemporary political analysis.

ICYMI >> Research published in the BMJ Global Health shows that parenting programmes delivered at scale can dramatically reduce violence against adolescent girls. Click link below to find out more.

Oxford Social Policy and Intervention@dspi-oxford.bsky.social · 3mo ago

📣NEW research published in BMJ Global Health shows that parenting programmes can reduce violence against teenage girls by over 60% when delivered at scale ⬇️ The study examined the effectiveness of parenting programmes endorsed by @who.int and @unicef.org 🔗 doi.org/10.1136/bmjg... @bmj.com

How are digital care platforms reshaping how migrant care work is organised? New research from @elifcan.bsky.social, published in the Journal of Social Policy, explores how migrant care workers in Turkey are represented on care platforms.

🙌 Congratulations to Dr Roselinde Janowski, DSPI Research Affiliate, and colleagues on their new publication in Annals of Behavioral Medicine which examined whether caregiver characteristics influenced the effectiveness of different design and delivery strategies for supporting engagement.

How is grey power tilting government priorities towards preservation over progress? Is this undermining the investment needed to tackle the negative consequences of ageing populations?  Great to Prof Tim Vlandas’ research, ‘Aging Advanced Capitalist Democracies’, cited again in recent weeks.

How can we give babies a voice before they can speak? New research from DSPI's Professor Jane Barlow and the Institute of Health Visiting shows that an innovative observational tool could transform how health visitors identify babies experiencing early psychological distress.

As the UK enters another period of extreme heat, @chlobrim.bsky.social , a climate scientist at DSPI whose research focuses on extreme heat, comments in @theguardian.com on the policy choices that heatwaves are forcing us to confront.

🎉Congratulations to DSPI’s @amiyabhatia.bsky.socialand @mnaczyk.bsky.social who have received the University of Oxford’s @socsci.ox.ac.ukTeaching Excellence Awards in recognition of their outstanding contributions to teaching at DSPI.

In his article for Die Welt discussing why young people emigrate, Jens Ulrich Eckhard draws on research from DSPI's Professor Tim Vlandas’s research on how grey power is influencing government priorities.

The SAFERCHILD project, led by DSPI’s Professor LucieCluver, has been awarded a €150,000 grant from the @erc.europa.eu  to turn groundbreaking research into a scalable child protection innovation.

🙌 Congratulations to Charlène Calderaro, postdoctoral fellow at DSPI, who has been named as joint winner of Politics & Gender's Best Article Prize 2026 for her article ‘Beyond Instrumentalization: Far-Right Women’s Appropriation of Feminism in France’.

As the UK's heatwave continues, Dr Chloe Brimicombe, postdoctoral researcher at DSPI, explains how people can stay safe during heatwaves and why policies must go further to prepare for rising temperatures. Read her Expert Comment 👇 @chlobrim.bsky.social

University of Oxford@ox.ac.uk · last mo.

As the UK experiences a potentially record breaking heatwave, Oxford expert, Dr Chloe Brimicombe from the @dspi-oxford.bsky.social explains how to cope with extreme heat and the policies that could build long-term resilience. Find out more ⬇️ https://bit.ly/4gEvqtD

Interviewed in Handelsblatt, DSPI’s Professor Tim Vlandas and University of York’s @dafnoukos.bsky.social drew on their report ‘Understanding Right-Wing Populism and What to Do About it’, to discuss the drivers of #FarRight support and the implications for democratic politics and public policy.

With the UK government’s announcement on social media restrictions for under 16s, evidence-informed policymaking is more important than ever. DSPI's EBSIPE students recently put their policy analysis skills to the test by examining the question: should social media be banned for U16s in the UK?

💡New research on #Ageing What happens when a country ages rapidly in the context of deep social and territorial #inequalities?  Read research on Peru co-authored by DSPI’s @ishmamunoz.bsky.social :

🙌Congratulations to DSPI’s @ishmamunoz.bsky.social on receiving a 2025 IPUMS Research Award for outstanding published research using @ipums.bsky.social Global Health data.

DSPI’s Dr Ismael G. Muñoz receives international research award for study on grandparents’ role in child nutrition

Research reveals how the benefits of grandparental co-residence vary across Africa’s demographic and health contexts

spi.ox.ac.uk

Research by DSPI’s Professor Tim Vlandas is cited in the latest HM Treasury guidance on policy evaluation, contributing to a framework for applying open science principles in government evaluation ▶️Research in PNAS: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... ▶️HM Treasury’s guidelines: www.gov.uk/government/p...

Estimating the extent and sources of model uncertainty in political science | PNAS

Assessing model uncertainty is crucial to quantitative political science. Yet, most available sensitivity analyses focus only on a few modeling cho...

pnas.org

ICYMI 👇 The last seminar of Trinity term is tomorrow: 'Elect Women for a Change: The Path to Gender Parity in Politics’ Non-DSPI members need to book via this link: forms.cloud.microsoft/Pages/Respon...

Oxford Social Policy and Intervention@dspi-oxford.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Join us for next week's seminar, 'Elect Women for a Change: The Path to Gender Parity in Politics' With speaker @mlkrook.bsky.social  🗓 Date: 11 June ⏰ Time: 4-5:30pm 💡 Registration required for non-DSPI members 🔗 More: https://events.ox.ac.uk/oxford_event/e6caf857-0434-f111-88b5-7c1e52046959

ICYMI ⤵️ What is David Attenborough’s legacy on climate communication as he turned 100? In an article in @theconversation.com, DSPI’s Dr @chlobrim.bsky.social explores how David Attenborough's work has helped shape real policy discussions and changes around climate change.

🙌Congratulations to @bridgetsteele.bsky.social who was named winner of the @ox.ac.uk Vice-Chancellor's 2026 Breakthrough Researcher Award for Leadership in Preventing #SexualViolence in #HigherEducation

Great opportunity for a Research Assistant, helping to grow research capacity for children under 5. Deadline for applications is 15 June 👇

NIHR Biomedical Research Centre: Oxford Health@oxhealthbrc.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Looking to build a career in early childhood mental health research? @dspi-oxford.bsky.social is recruiting a part-time Research Assistant to support the Supporting Early Minds Network, helping grow research capacity for children under 5. Apply by 15 June: tinyurl.com/32va6y4y

Join us for next week's seminar, 'Elect Women for a Change: The Path to Gender Parity in Politics' With speaker @mlkrook.bsky.social  🗓 Date: 11 June ⏰ Time: 4-5:30pm 💡 Registration required for non-DSPI members 🔗 More: https://events.ox.ac.uk/oxford_event/e6caf857-0434-f111-88b5-7c1e52046959

ICYMI: The next seminar of Trinity term is tomorrow: 'The search for satifying methods in complex policy research’ Non-DSPI members need to book via this link: forms.cloud.microsoft/Pages/Respon...

Oxford Social Policy and Intervention@dspi-oxford.bsky.social · 2mo ago

🎓Trinity Term Seminar 🗓4 June ⏰4-5:30pm Join Dr Alvarado's talk next week, discussing a motivating policy problem (a sugar-sweetened beverage tax in Barbados) and the ‘what now/next’ question in relation to this policy.⤵️ https://f.mtr.cool/fganiiupwn

📢NEW research provides first quantitative evidence that drought exposure over the last 12 months is linked to increase risk of sexual, emotional and physical violence among adolescents in Southern Africa

Great to see Professor Tim Vlandas’s research on how #ageing is reshaping the economic and political foundations of European Welfare States published in @etui.bsky.social  🔗 Read the research in full www.etui.org/publications/ageing-european-electorates-and-new-progressive-growth-dilemma

With temperatures in the UK reaching a new high for May, @chlobrim.bsky.social, DSPI climate scientist, has been talking to the media about growing challenge of extreme heat in the workplace. Listen to Dr Brimicombe talking on Radio 5 Live on Monday (from 25:00):

Nicky Campbell - Too hot to work? And who cares for the carers? - BBC Sounds

Too hot to work? And who cares for the carers? Nicky takes your calls.

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How do older votes ‘electorally reward and punish’? Research by Prof Tim Vlandas features in a new Labour Together report outlining the case for compulsory voting. Read the full research: muse.jhu.edu/pub/1/articl...