SCHOOL FOR POLICY STUDIES

Randall Smith

Randall Smith

Personal profile

Randall retired in 2001 as Reader in Policy Studies having reached pensionable age. He now enjoys a two year renewable University appointment as a Senior Research Fellow. In 2009 he was awarded the title of Honorary Professorial Research Fellow. Apart from a modest teaching load, he concentrated in the early years after retirement on completing two co-authored books on community care and services for older people and two co-edited books based on an EU Fifth Framework Programme project on participatory governance.

Since then, he has published a UACES monograph on Constitutionalising the European Union and has a jointly authored report on significant life events in old age, based on research financed by the Nuffield Foundation. In 2005 he worked on a project funded by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister. The report influenced the government's review of the disabled facilities grant. His recent research, funded by the ESRC,  revisited Peter Townsend's study of residential care (published as The Last Refuge in 1962). This was conducted with two colleagues from the Open University. Articles have been published in the International Journal of Social Research Methodology and the Journal of Social Policy. A book, Residential Care Transformed, was published by Palgrave Macmillan in June 2010. In 2011 it was awarded the inaugural Peter Townsend Memorial Prize, promoted by the British Academy and the Policy Press.

He is also involved in an ESRC project as part of the New Dynamics of Ageing programme. Its theme is maintaining dignity in old age and the project is led by Liz Lloyd at the School together with colleagues from the Universities of Kent and Nottingham. In 2010, he was a member of the Commissioning Panel for the ESRC's Professorial Fellows Competition and will undertake this role again in 2012.

He is co-editor of a book published by Nomos in 2008, based on papers given at a EU sponsored conference in Athens in May 2005. The conference theme was Multi-Level Governance in Europe. Also in 2008 he completed with two colleagues the fourth edition of the textbook, Community Care: Policy and Practice, also published by Palgrave Macmillan.

He is a member of the Editorial Board of the journal, Policy and Politics, having been its editor between 1996 and 1999. Outside the University, he was a member of the Executive Committee of the British Society of Gerontology between 2003 and 2009 and has been a Trustee of Age Concern Bristol (now Age UK Bristol) since 1997.

Teaching interests

Adult social care policies and practices.

Research interests

The domestic impact of European Union policies, practices and procedures; Community care policies and practices; Policies for elderly people.

Research projects

Current

Completed

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