News and Blog

Professor Susan McVie and Dr Ben Matthews have authored a third data report scrutinising the police use of Fixed Penalty Noticed (FPNs) under the temporary powers introduced by the Coronavirus Regulations to help stop the spread of the virus. This report examines all FPNs issued between March and December 2020.  It represents the most detailed analysis for any UK police force of how many FPNs were issued, who received them, and where and when FPNs were issued.  Importantly, it also shows how rates and patterns of enforcement changed over time.  

Four new short research videos have been published by the UI team to demonstrate some of the key findings from their research. The videos are designed for a range of audiences and can be used as a short introduction to inequalities on a range of topics, including: the impact of childhood inequalities on later life outcomes, the unequal risks of offending and justice system contact, the decentralisation of poverty and its unequal effect on different populations, and the use of AI techniques to improve effectiveness and equity of police service delivery.

Previous UI researcher, Dr Francesca Fiori, has been awarded a Research Re-Boot Grant from the Royal Society of Edinburgh. She will use the funding to re-start a UI research project on childhood inequalities that was halted as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The University of Edinburgh Law School is seeking to appoint dynamic, committed and enthusiastic Research Assistants to work with Professor Susan McVie, Professor Lesley McAra and Dr Paul Norris on the ESRC-funded Understanding Inequalities (UI) project.

Working as part of a small team, the Research Assistants will be responsible for conducting analysis of quantitative data from one of three large-scale datasets: the Scottish Crime and Justice Survey, the Growing Up in Scotland study or the Edinburgh Study of Youth Transitions and Crime. 

The ESRI is currently recruiting a tenure-track quantitative sociologist in the Social Research Division of the ESRI, which consists of a multi-disciplinary team of sociologists, economists, epidemiologists, psychologists, health service researchers and statisticians.

It intends to appoint at Research Officer level although the appointment may be made at Senior Research Officer level if appropriate to the successful candidate’s skills and experience.

Professor Cristina Iannelli has written an opinion piece on social inequalities in labour market outcomes among graduates, highlighting that education is not always the great equaliser that it is assumed to be. 

A degree helps, but doesn't guarantee social mobility | Scotland | The Times

“Policies that offer sustained support are needed to ensure people from low socio-economic groups can reap the benefits associated with a degree.
Adequate grants, mentoring and career advice are among the provisions that would help students smoothly transition into good graduate jobs.”
– Professor Cristina Iannelli

Darren McGarvey's Scotland documentary series is nominated for a BAFTA Scotland Award for Best Factual Series. Professor Susan McVie, Director of the Understanding Inequalities project, featured in episode 2 of the documentary series

Gender is a key issue for employability policy. Dr Francesca Fiori reflects on discussions with representatives from the Scottish Government and third sector organisations on research evidence that children living with a working lone mother have a higher level of wellbeing.

Professor Gwilym Pryce, Co-Director of the Understanding Inequalities project, is launching a new project drawing together research on social frontiers on Thursday 10th September 2020.

Since the 1990s, there has been a dramatic drop in crime levels across many developed countries. At the same time crime continues to be concentrated in particular deprived places. With much of the attention paid to the absolute crime performances in places, the relative inequalities in the exposure to crime have been largely neglected. Examining relative inequalities matters because they are associated with individual wellbeing and a range of social outcomes. We studied how relative crime trajectories for the period 2007-2016 are associated with levels of deprivation in Glasgow (Scotland) and Birmingham (England), which both suffer from high levels of deprivation.​

This blog, for the Journal of Urban Studies Blog, is drawn from a recent paper by Fingleton, Olner and Pryce - Estimating the local employment impacts of immigration: A dynamic spatial panel model, published by the Journal of Urban Studies. 

UK-based criminologists who work with linked administrative datasets often cast an envious eye over to the Scandinavian countries, where information about an individual’s criminal convictions is securely linked together with a wide range of other personal data through ‘register’ based systems.

Congratulations to Understanding Inequalities Director Professor Susan McVie and Co-Investigator Professor Lesley McAra on receiving the 2019 ESRC Impact Prize for Outstanding Public Policy in July.  

This UI blog looks at how recording practices in the Scottish criminal justice system can impact on the quality of statistics produced by public agencies and the implications of this for research on inequalities.

The Understanding Inequalities (UI) research team invites all researchers, policy makers and practitioners working in the field of social and spatial inequalities to save the date for the upcoming 2020 International Conference.

Is it racism? Or is there another explanation? Understanding Inequalities Co-Director Gwilym Pryce writes about the concerning pattern emerging in Glasgow's housing market

Read Gwilym's article in full at The Conversation website.

Professor Susan McVie was interviewed by the BBC regarding the recent increase in knife crime in England and the suggested link between the rise in violent crime and school exclusion rates.

Read the piece, by Nichola Rutherford, in full on the BBC website:

Is there a link between Scotland's exclusion rates and knife crime? - BBC News Scotland

Susan McVie, Ellie Bates, and Rebecca Pillinger examine long-term change in violence within Greater London and the old Strathclyde region and ask whether there really is evidence of Scottish exceptionalism in patterns and trends in violence.

This guest post for the LSE British Policy and Politics blog was published on Monday 17th December 2018. Read the blog in full here:

UI Co-Director Gwilym Pryce and Dr Meng Le Zhang wrote a piece for The Conversation, published on Wednesday 7th November,  which looks at various aspects of inequality in Scotland in the two decades since the enactment of the Scotland Act in 1998.

Read the piece in full:

Inequality in Scotland: despite Nordic aspirations, things are not improving | The Conversation