Dr Adam Whitworth

Lecturer in Quantitative Human Geography

	Room number:	E18
	Telephone (internal):	27955
	Telephone (UK):	0114 222 7955
	Telephone (International):	+44 114 222 7955
	Email:	Adam.Whitworth@Sheffield.ac.uk

Adam Whitworth is a graduate of Oxford University (BA Politics, Philosophy, Economics (First Class Honours)), where he continued for his Masters (MSc Comparative Social Policy) and doctoral research. His PhD was grounded within the competing theoretical perspectives of New Labour’s social exclusion paradigm and the feminist ethic of care which each emphasize alternative hypotheses, assumptions, values and policy levers in terms of lone parent employment and well-being. The research involved a mixed methods approach including analysis of the UK Time Use Survey and semi-structured interviews with working lone mothers in the UK to explore their experiences of work-family reconciliation, in particular the balance between the activities of work and care and the resources of cash and time.

After completing his PhD Adam worked as a quantitative researcher at the University of Oxford on a range of projects commissioned by central government in the UK and South Africa. One strand of his research during this period focused on the high-profile projects to measure and monitor multiple deprivation at small area level including the creation of the English Indices of Multiple Deprivation and the Economic Deprivation Index. A second strand of the research involved the statistical evaluation of the impact of government interventions to tackle various aspects of neighbourhood deprivation (eg education, crime, worklessness). This evaluative work was conducted within the national evaluation team both of the New Deal for Communities Programme and the National Strategy for Neighbourhood Renewal.

Adam is a mixed methods researcher who has experience of qualitative methods and GIS as well as extensive quantitative and statistical skills across different software and different data types. He has particular expertise in the secondary data analysis of survey data as well as large and complex administrative datasets such as the Work and Pensions Longitudinal Survey (WPLS), National Pupil Database (NPD) and police recorded crime data.

In 2010 he joined the University of Sheffield as a lecturer in Human Geography where he is a member of the Social and Spatial Inequalities research group within the Department of Geography.

Research Interests

Social and spatial inequality; gender, families and children; lone parenthood; poverty and exclusion; small area estimation; developmental social policy; crime; happiness and well-being.

Current research

Adam's research is theoretically informed empirical analysis which seeks to inform policy and practice around issues of poverty, deprivation and inequality both socially across different groups as well as spatially between (typically small) geographies. He is currently working across four strands of work:

• Continuing his South Africa research, one strand of research uses spatial microsimulation in order to explore spatial inequality in income between South African neighborhoods and to quantify the effects of policy changes (both real and potential) on neighbourhood poverty and inequality;
• Analysis of UK policy around lone parent employment, particularly around questioning the justness, necessity and efficacy of the welfare reforms as well as to explore the neglected spatial patterns and implications of the reforms;
• With colleagues in Sheffield and at the Fondacao Joao Pinheiro (Minas Gerais), Adam is working on issues around street working children, poverty and inequality in Brazil;
• Focusing on the potential role of inequality as a driver of social ills (rather than on inequalities in social outcomes), a third strand of work uses multivariate and multi-level modelling techniques to explore the evidence for a robust link between inequality and increased levels of crime.

A full publications list can be found via the link top-right.
Adam would be happy to talk to those interested in carrying out doctoral research in any of these research areas.

Teaching

Undergraduate Teaching
Adam teaches a range of undergraduate modules around political and economic geographies as well as research design and statistical methods. He is keen to engage students with lecture discussions and examples from his own research so as to support students to be critically aware and empirically informed in thinking through the often simplified debates about the ongoing changes in the world as well as to see the role and relevance of research to policy. In his teaching of statistics and quantitative methods, Adam is keen to use clear examples, simple explanations and two-way discussions with students in lectures, seminars and practicals to show both how useful numbers can be and that it's not nearly as hard as students might at first imagine.

Adam was one of three nominees for the Best Practice in Feedback award at the 2011 Sheffield Students' Union Academic Awards. These are awards run, nominated and given by students in recognition that good teaching has an enormous positive impact on student's learning experience.

Adam's input on undergraduate courses includes:

GEO152 Statistical Data Analysis in Geography
GEO231 Socio-Spatial Analysis
GEO243 Political Geographies
GEO358 Geography of Europe Field Class
GEO369 Social and Spatial Inequalities

All staff also engage in personal supervision and tutoring of individual students at all three levels in the following modules:
GEO163 (Information & Communication Skills for Geographers)
GEO263 or GEO264 (Research Design in Human or Physical Geography)
GEO356 (Geographical Research Project)

Masters Teaching
At Masters level Adam teaches on the Social and Spatial Inequalities course and is involved in modules on Global Inequalities, Urban Inequalities, Core Quantitative Methods and Advanced Quantitative methods. These seminars are a relaxed, open environment for critically informed discussion where students are encouraged to question and deepen their understanding of the issues and evidence. Wherever appropriate Adam is keen to contextualise his teaching with his own research activities, whether in relation to social policy in post-Apartheid South Africa or statistical methods for policy evaluation or measuring multidimensional poverty.

Adam's specialist teaching on Masters courses includes:
GEO6017 Urban and Regional Inequalities
GEO6019 Global Inequality
GEO6025 Advanced Quantitative Methods (Quantitative Methods for SASI II)

Professional affiliations

Adam has been part of the Executive Committee of the UK Social Policy Association between 2004 and 2011, and has been on the editorial board for the Journal of Social Policy since 2008. He is a regular reviewer for the Journal of Social Policy, Social Policy and Society, and Urban Studies.