Karen Rowlingson joined the University of Birmingham’s Department of Social Policy and Social Work in February 2007 as Professor of Social Policy. She is currently Chair of the Social Policy Association (from 2019), and Member of REF 2021 sub-panel for Social Work and Social Policy (UoA 20). From 2016-2017 she was the Specialist Advisor to the House of Lords Select Committee on Financial Exclusion. After studying Modern History at Oxford University and Sociology at the LSE, Karen then worked at the Policy Studies Institute in London before becoming an academic at the Universities of Derby and then Bath. From 2010-2012 she was the Vice Chair of the ESRC's Research Committee and Chair of its Grants Delivery Group. Karen was Founding Director of CHASM (the Research Centre on Household Assets and Savings Management) in 2010 and Deputy Head of College for the College of Social Sciences from 2017-2019.
