TRAINING WORKSHOP: Comparative and International Social Policy Theories & Methods. LESSONS FOR RESEARCH AND PRACTICE IN INDIA

24- 25th March 2014, O.P. JINDAL GLOBAL UNIVERSITY, SONIPAT NARELA ROAD, SONIPAT, HARYANA- 131001, NCR OF DELHI

Overview of the Workshop:

This training workshop will bring together academics, practitioners and government officials who are working on emerging social policy issues in India and the United Kingdom. Its primary aim is to provide participants with an answer to the question ‘What is Social Policy?’ by providing an overview of its key theoretical and methodological approaches. In particular, the workshop aims to discuss the relevance and applicability of social policy research across the Social Science disciplines to lower middle income economies – specifically India. It will do so by considering linkages between specific poverty reduction and welfare programmes and outcomes, such as human well-being, equality, capabilities, freedom and growth, in comparative and international perspective. The training workshop will form the inaugural event of the newly constituted Indian Social Policy Association, which aims to facilitate interdisciplinary collaboration in teaching and research between India and the United Kingdom as well as exchanges between the academe, policy and practice within and across both of these countries.

The training workshop will provide:
1. An overview of Social Policy as an academic discipline in the United Kingdom starting from its intellectual origins in public administration, the impact of the New Right shift of the 1980s to the more recent focus on research impact and the internationalisation of its research agenda, funding bodies and academic networks;
2. An introduction to key social policy theories starting from discussions about social rights/citizenship, inequalities, poverty/social exclusion and the development of distinct historical welfare regimes across the globe to more recent discussions of new social risks and the recalibration of longstanding welfare settlements in the context of globalisation and knowledge based economies;
3. An introduction to methodological approaches in social policy, poverty reduction and welfare research from longstanding debates about the merits of qualitative and quantitative modes of inquiry to more recent contributions emphasising triangulation and systematic mixed methods approaches;
4. A discussion of the ability to apply all of the above of in lower middle-income context specifically India.

The number of participants is restricted to 50 – please secure your place early to avoid disappointment.

For more details on confirmed speakers, participant fees etc. please see: http://www.jgls.edu.in/sites/default/files/events/C-I-S-P-T-M_0_0.pdf