Message from Claire Alexander, Head of the School of Social Sciences
16 Jun 2026
This week, Claire reflects on student recruitment, a successful School Teaching and Research Showcase, and celebrates recent academic and PS achievements.
Dear colleagues,
As we near the end of the academic year, with marking (hopefully) complete, exam boards looming and the joys of graduation heralding a welcome summer break, I and my colleagues in SoSS School Executive are reflecting on the past year and planning for the challenges of the new one.
My goddaughter, who is studying for a degree in SALC, and who will graduate this summer, started her studies at the same time as I took on my role as Head of School, and those (nearly) three years have passed in the blink of an eye. I think it’s fair to say that those years have been a learning experience for both of us, with challenges and joys along the way. And perhaps, in very different ways, we are both contemplating what will happen next.
Overall, the School has had a successful year in teaching and student experience, research and social responsibility, and we will be celebrating the achievements of our colleagues, and the teams who support them, across the School at an event in late June. As with other Schools, and the sector more widely, we faced challenges in postgraduate taught (PGT) recruitment, but were able to compensate through greater undergraduate recruitment across a number of our programmes.
In a context of increasingly competitive (or even cutthroat) undergraduate recruitment, and a shrinking PGT market, colleagues have been developing leading-edge courses, with Social Statistics pioneering new pathways in our popular BAEcon and BASS programmes, and Social Anthropology launching a refreshed Applied Anthropology MA.
For our current students, a recent SoSS Teaching and Research Showcase highlighted the innovative work across our Departments, including partnerships with students in decolonising the curriculum in Politics, which won a Students’ Union Award. The Justice Hub and Q-Step programmes are leading the way in our preparations for partner-enabled-learning.
The showcase also demonstrated exciting innovation in inclusive assessment (Criminology and Philosophy) and co-creation with students (Politics, Economics and Social Statistics). Elsewhere, colleagues are grappling with the challenges of AI, with important work led by Sociology. Our Student Support and Wellbeing team, overseen by Rachid M’rabty, were deservedly shortlisted for the Team award of the recent Distinguished Achievement Awards for their incredible care for SoSS’s 6,000+ students.
In research, the School has been awarded over £6.6 million in new grants to date, including two Leverhulme Major Research Fellowships (Sociology, Social Anthropology) and UKRI funding for research on ‘air inequality’ (Sociology, with SALC, the Faculty of Science and Engineering (FSE), and the Faculty of Biology, Medicine and Health (FBMH)). We have made key appointments in the areas of environmental sustainability (Politics, Social Anthropology), AI (Social Statistics) and inequalities (Sociology), as well as a new Director of the Manchester China Institute (Law).
We were particularly delighted to welcome Becky Willis and Jacob Ainscough as joint appointments with FSE (Tyndall Centre). Our colleagues are contributing to the research platforms as Deputy Director of Creative Manchester (Social Anthropology) and Sustainable Futures (Sociology).
The SoSS showcase highlighted the ongoing work around impact across the School, with an extraordinarily diverse range of stakeholders at local, regional and national level, and a growing profile and partnerships internationally. We were particularly proud of our Law colleagues’ involvement in the United Nations Academic Impact Sustainable Development Goal 10 (UNAI SDG 10 (reduced inequalities)) Hub as vice-chairs for research, and the success of colleagues in the Manchester Urban Ageing Research Group (Sociology), who were awarded a prestigious Team Achievement Excellence Award from the Vivensa Foundation.
We have continued to expand our network for researchers working on emotionally demanding research (established in 2024-25 by Alice Bloch, Caroline Miles and Rose Broad) and are working with colleagues across the Faculty on training, networking and peer support. We were also delighted to collaborate with Tshego Seabi on her British Academy and International Science Partnerships Fund Official Development Assistance (ISPF-ODA) Awards to work on equitable partnerships and ethical research collaborations with partners across the Faculty, and with colleagues in Ethiopia, Tanzania, Uganda, Ghana and Kenya.
SoSS has always had a strong commitment to EDI – however unfashionable this is currently – and we were delighted to be awarded a Silver Athena Swan award this year for our progress on gender equity. This important work was led by Claire Fox and Sarah Tiffany Dodman. Our ongoing collaboration with Active Communities Network on its innovative approach to teaching sexual consent was highly commended in this year’s Making A Difference Awards.
We launched a new School SWAN network to encourage and support women into senior leadership roles, while our work on anti-racist or decolonial praxis has cut across teaching and research, and was highly commended in the Outstanding Contribution to EDI at the Making a Difference Awards.
While there are no doubt challenges ahead in terms of student recruitment, a fast-changing funding and postgraduate research (PGR) landscape, and the implementation of the Future Foundations initiative, I am privileged to work alongside an amazing School Executive team, brilliant Heads of Department and dedicated PS colleagues supporting and shaping all we do. Our recent appointments and promotions across the School testify to our collective strengths, our innovation and resilience, and our faith in a successful shared future.
Best wishes,
Claire