Fran Bennett
Emeritus Fellow
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Fran Bennett was a Senior Research Fellow and is now an Emeritus Fellow of the Department. She has a particular interest in social security policy, gender issues, and poverty and participation.
Fran is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences and a member of the policy advisory group of the Women's Budget Group. She was appointed to the Social Security Advisory Committee in September 2025.
She has written extensively on social policy issues for the UK government, NGOs and others. With Professor Jane Millar of the University of Bath, she was specialist advisor to the House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee for its inquiry into universal credit (report published July 2020).
Fran's most recent research involved investigating how Universal Credit affects couples in an ESRC-funded project (ES/R004811/1), led by Professor Jane Millar. She has also co-edited, with Silvia Avram and Siobhan Austen, 'A Research Agenda for Financial Resources within the Household', relating to the management and distribution of financial resources within the household, for Edward Elgar (published January 2024).
Fran Bennett's research focuses on:
- social security policy
- gender issues, especially in relation to within-household distribution and tax/social security
- poverty and income distribution.
Her current research involves investigating how Universal Credit affects couples in an ESRC-funded project (ES/R004811/1), led by Professor Jane Millar, University of Bath.
Previously she examined (with others) the interaction between within-household inequalities and policy on tax and benefits in the UK in a project in the ESRC-funded Gender Equality Network (2002-10), and wrote an evidence and policy review on gender and poverty for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation with Professor Mary Daly, DSPI.