Monday, 25 March 2019 at 5:30 pm – Monday, 25 March 2019 at 7:30 pm
Susan Baines Inaugural Lecture
Reinventing the past – investing in the future
Date: Monday 25th March 2018
Time: 5.30pm – 7.30pm, wine reception from 5.30pm – 6pm
Location: LT1 Geoffrey Manton
Tickets: Free. Available on Eventbrite here: https://susan-baines-inaugural.eventbrite.com
This talk refers to many years devoted to applied social research on themes that have spanned micro-enterprise, family enterprise, artists’ businesses, voluntary action, welfare service reform, social enterprise, and social innovation. I reflect on some connections that may be obvious or less obvious, some surprises and encounters, and most of all - learning. I look back on my early research about social aspects of enterprise, then rarely studied from either a business or a sociological perspective. Against a background of policy and academic enthusiasm for an ‘enterprising’ society boosted by business start-ups, my colleagues and I contended that the celebrated flexibility of small businesses often represented reinvention of distinctly old ways of working, home-based, gendered and dependent on family work that was rarely remunerated. Unpaid work within and for communities was the central theme my research collaboration with Professor Hardill. My recently published co-edited book based on Horizon 2020 research evaluates - in a sympathetic but critical way - the theory and practice of ‘social investment’ as a new welfare paradigm. At the heart of social investment lies the idea that 21st Century welfare states need to invest in the future by strengthening skills and capacities, beginning in early life. In an unanticipated return to themes from my earlier studies, it emerged that attempts to enact social investment all over Europe rely upon many old and new roles in volunteering, mutual aid, self-provisioning, care-giving and community activism. Perhaps an instance of back to the beginning!
Sue Baines is Professor of Social Enterprise in the Department of Sociology. She works with the Policy Evaluation & Research Unit (PERU) where she leads research and knowledge exchange projects on Social Innovation and Welfare Reform. She joined Manchester Metropolitan University in 2007 as Reader in Social Policy. She was formerly a principal researcher at Newcastle University, having originally entered academia to undertake doctoral research under the auspices of the multi-disciplinary national Programme for Information Communications and Technologies (PICT).
Her early publications on social aspects of micro enterprises, household economies and home-based work are highly cited. Her research has since spanned social enterprise, innovation, welfare reform and civil society. She has led many research and knowledge exchange projects on these themes with funding from UK Research Councils, the European Commission, charities and businesses. She is currently the lead for Manchester Met in a consortium of 24 partners across Europe on a three-year H2020 innovation project Co-creation of Service Innovations in Europe (CoSIE).
Professor Baines will be introduced by Professor Sharon Handley. Professor Sharon Handley is Pro-Vice-Chancellor of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities, a multidisciplinary Faculty where Humanities, Languages and Social Sciences sit alongside the Manchester School of Art and the Manchester Fashion Institute.
Professor Irene Hardill will respond to the lecture. Irene Hardill is Professor of Public Policy in the Department of Social Sciences at Northumbria University. Irene’s research is concerned with volunteering and the voluntary and community sector, demography and ageing, and knowledge exchange.