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In recent years, parents and parenting have featured prominently in policy discourse in the UK and elsewhere. The increasingly prevalent view that social and educational policy must pay specific attention to the role and needs of parents and families is reflected in talk of 'parenting workshops', 'parenting orders' (introduced by the UK Ministry of Justice, the Youth Justice Board and the Department for Children, Schools and Families in 2004) and in the recent establishment of a National Parenting Academy (based at Kings College, London). Parallel trend are evident elsewhere in Europe, for example through initiatives such as the Belgian Higher Institute for Family Sciences, and the idea of a 'parenting contract' (Van Crombrugge, 2005). At the same time, a wealth of popular literature and television programmes is aimed at parents, suggesting ways they can improve their 'parenting skills'.\n\nWhile the endeavour to put families and children on the public policy agenda, and the recognition that there is a range of ways in which social services and professionals can support parents is to be welcomed, there is some concern that the manner in which this discourse is framed and the conceptual and evaluative resources that inform it are somewhat narrow.\n\nIn particular, much of the policy discourse on parenting support (e.g. the recent Every Child Matters initiative), as well as academic research that informs this policy (see for instance Hallam et al, 2004), is framed in predominantly psychological or psychiatric language. Likewise, the constitution of the UK National Academy for Parenting Practitioners and affiliated parenting support organizations is composed of researchers and practitioners from the fields of health care, psychiatry, developmental psychology and social work. While we recognize the importance of work in these fields for our understanding of the impact and nature of parent-child relationships, we feel that there are important conceptual, ethical, and historical questions to be asked about the underlying assumptions and implications of this work and the normative positions associated with it. \n\nThe current proposal draws on some initial conceptual work already undertaken through publications, workshops and conference presentations by the principal investigator and her colleagues, in order to explore ways in which philosophical insights and resources can be brought to bear on parenting practice and policy. The interdisciplinary workshop series is intended to foster discussions between academics, policy-makers and practitioners, bringing philosophical work together with theoretical perspectives from other related disciplines, including history of childhood, sociology and psychoanalysis, in order to develop a more robust and theoretically rich account of 'parenting' that can both inform policy initiatives and suggest new directions for research.\n\nWhile the long-term goal of this project is to inform parenting policy and practice, an essential stage in the process of developing research and policy initiatives is to facilitate and encourage a rigorous philosophical discussion about the concepts and values involved. To this end, the workshops will address issues such as the following:\n\n1. The distinction between parenting as a task and a profession; the difference between the parent-child relationship and other relationships; the implications of applying the language of justice and rights to the realm of the family. \n\n2. The cultural, political and historical roots of the normative assumptions behind current conceptions of 'good parenting'. \n\n3. The connections between dominant practices and norms around parenting, and broader theoretical understandings of political and social trends, such as the professionalization of private life and the idea of the 'learning society', as well as some of the commonly-encountered opposition to these perceived trends, i.e. arguments against the "nanny state".

This project will look at whether the Economic and Social Research Council, which is a major funder of economic and social science research in the UK, should fund a major new research panel in the UK. The idea is recruit a large number of people (the 'panel'), representative of the UK population, and ask them to fill in questionnaires regularly over the internet. The questionnaires would cover lots of different topics, and researchers who wanted to know about a particular topic could ask for their questions to be included. This would mean that lots of researchers who don't have the time or money to set-up their own study would be able to get answers to the questions they are interested in quickly, and because the panel is already set-up and uses the internet, this would be relatively cheap too. The purpose of this project is to look at whether it is a good idea to set-up such a panel, how best to do this and how much it would cost. We will speak to researchers in universities, government and the voluntary sector about whether they would use it, what they might use it for and what it would need to be like in order to meet their needs. We would also look at how similar panels in other countries are run and who uses them, and look at information about what kinds of studies the ESRC funds at the moment, to work out whether any of them could use the new internet panel instead. We will also look into how best to design such a panel, including how to identify the people to take part and how to encourage them to answer the surveys. Again, to do this we would speak to researchers who might use it, and look at how similar panels are designed and run. The idea is that a panel like this could mean that UK social scientists are able to do as much (or more) high-quality research, but for less money. This would mean that UK taxpayers' money is used more efficiently and effectively.

There is an accepted need to promote step changes towards more sustainable urban environments, notably in transport and travel, which we will focus on. While many model-based desk-studies have aimed to simulate such environments as part of a decision support tool, they adopt many unvalidated, hypothetical assumptions, particularly in the way that major transport focused interventions might impact on both behaviour and the effectiveness of the infrastructure. There is very little real evidence of what works and what can be used to promote such changes, deriving from either the physical nature and make-up of urban environments and in the way that people choose to act and behave. This 5 year proposal will build on the momentum of major EPSRC- and ESRC-supported activity at the Institute for Transport Studies (ITS) at the University of Leeds and the Centre for Research on Socio-Cultural Change (CRESC) at the University of Manchester in order to fill this evidence gap, providing an empirically grounded frame for the modelling of transformational futures.The project seeks to produce a step change in current knowledge and practice using a mix of new data sources, methodological innovation in analysis of this diverse data, development of new planning practices and procedures and supporting modelling tools. To this end it will develop visions of urban futures of 2050 which are both resilient to external change and sustainable. The knowledge and procedures developed as part of this project will provide a foundation upon which planners and others involved in decision-making in relation to urban transport, at both local and national levels, can start to put in place the necessary changes to achieve the resilient and sustainable visions of 2050.The proposed research is ambitious and novel. We will undertake the first largely qualitative longitudinal panel study of households which focuses on their transport activity, in particular delving into questions of why they do certain things and how change might be brought about. This work will be complemented by study of historical information over longer periods of time, making use of available information from a variety of transport and non-transport databases, coupled with testimony from planners and others in two study areas who have experienced changes first hand. The task of bringing these diverse data sources together will be innovative and seek to effectively explore ways of integrating these materials in a number of different ways which recognise the complexity of decisions and practices around transport and allow us to draw some understanding of why step changes occur. We will use the results of these analyses to feed into more theoretical work which will consider firstly the potential for new planning procedures and practice and secondly new modelling tools which provide the means to help achieve the step changes necessary in transport for sustainable and resilient urban futures by 2050.

Doctoral Training Partnerships: a range of postgraduate training is funded by the Research Councils. For information on current funding routes, see the common terminology at https://www.ukri.org/apply-for-funding/how-we-fund-studentships/. Training grants may be to one organisation or to a consortia of research organisations. This portal will show the lead organisation only.