CRESR Seminar Series 2024-25

The 2024/25 CRESR Seminar Series ran from February 2024 - July 2025 and all the details relating to each seminar can be found below. If you have any queries relating to these, please contact us.

Presentations

• Download 'Who is the Boss? Women in the app-based transport sector in Spain (PPTX, 9.7MB)' slides - Belen Martinez (PPT, 9.65MB)
• Download 'Interrogating "Inclusion" and "Empowerment": Women’s experiences in the "Gig" Economy in India (PPTX, 424.5KB)' slides - Kaveri Medappa (PPT, 424KB)
• Download 'Platforms of precarity: Women's economic rights and the gig econom (PPTX, 3.5MB)y' slides - Natalia Rodriguez-Malagon (PPT, 3.51MB)
   

Abstract

The seminar will explore the diverse experiences of women navigating the growing digital platform economy. It critically examines the narratives of empowerment and inclusion often promoted by state actors and industries, contrasting these with the lived realities of precarity, informality, and discrimination shaped by intersecting inequalities of gender, class, race, and geography. Taking a global perspective, the discussion will consider how digital platforms influence opportunities and risks for women workers, addressing themes such as strategies to navigate unsafe and unequal gig work environments, the impact of weak regulatory frameworks, and the urgency of developing gender-just approaches to platform governance and AI development. This seminar aims to foster dialogue on advancing rights and protections for women in gig work while focusing their knowledge and agency on shaping a more equitable future. The seminar will feature Dr Kaveri Medappa and Natalia Rodriguez Malagon, with moderation by Dr Belen Martinez, who will also share insights on the topic from her thesis, which explored the everyday experiences of women working in the taxi and platform sectors in Malaga, Spain.

Biography

Dr Belen Martinez is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Regional Economic and Social Research (CRESR). She completed a PhD in International Development at the University of Sussex, where her research examined the experiences of women working as drivers in the taxi and platform sectors in Malaga, Spain. Her work explores how women navigate male-dominated workplaces and the implications for gender equality. She has also researched female safety in the on-demand courier sector in Spain.

Dr Kaveri Medappa is a postdoctoral researcher in human geography in the Department for Continuing Education, and a Junior Research Fellow at Kellogg College, University of Oxford. She received her PhD in International Development from the University of Sussex (2018-2022) for her ethnographic study of app-based food delivery workers and cab drivers in Bangalore, India.

Natalia Rodriguez Malagon is a feminist human rights and gender justice specialist at ActionAid UK, focusing on Women’s Economic Justice through feminist policy, research, and advocacy for economic alternatives centred on care and wellbeing. With over nine years of experience, mainly in Colombia, she has worked across governmental and non-governmental organisations at local, national, and international levels, specialising in gender-responsive planning, budgeting, and corporate accountability. You can read a recent report published by Natalia - 'Platforms of precarity: Women's economic rights and the gig economy'.

Abstract

Before the July 2024 election Keir Starmer offered a new partnership between government and the voluntary sector for a ‘society of service’, after years of policy neglect from previous governments. A new ‘covenant’ setting out the principles for that reset relationship is in development. However, the Labour government is now approaching the end of its first 9 months in office, and is challenged on multiple fronts, its attention drawn elsewhere. What then are the prospects for a reset relationship between government and the voluntary sector? And what are the contours and tension points in that relationship? Join us for a lively and informative discussion of these questions with our panel of expert speakers.

Biography

• Jane Ide is Chief Executive Officer of ACEVO – the Association of Chief Executives of Voluntary Organisations, a network of over 1,750 civil society CEOs and senior leaders in England and Wales. She has leadership and communications experience in both the voluntary and public sectors. Previous roles include leading Creative and Cultural Skills and as CEO at NAVCA, the National Association for Voluntary and Community Action. She received an OBE for services to volunteering and charity in 2021.
• Grace Wyld is Head of Policy and Research at the Future Governance Forum, a think tank founded in 2023 to advance new approaches to progressive policymaking and delivery. Grace brings expertise in policy research, strategy, and measurement and evaluation, with previous roles at Trussell Trust, New Philanthropy Capital and the Sheila McKechnie Foundation.
• James Rees is Professor of Civil Society and Public Policy, and Deputy Director of the Institute for Community Research and Development at the University of Wolverhampton. He has been a co-editor of Voluntary Sector Review and has published widely on aspects of the voluntary sector particularly in relation to public service delivery, leadership and citizen involvement. His last co-edited book ‘COVID-19 and the voluntary and community sector in the UK’ was published by Policy Press in 2023.
• Rob Macmillan is a Principal Research Fellow at the Centre for Regional Economic and Social research at Sheffield Hallam University.

Abstract

Chancellor Rachel Reeves has characterised the current period as an ‘age of insecurity’ (Reeves 2023, Labour Party 2024)., and described her approach to economic policy as ‘securonomics’, aiming to provide reliable rewards for hard work and security for all (Reeves 2023). What role does housing insecurity play in this ‘age of insecurity’? Are there any causal relationships between housing insecurity and other insecurities? What role could reductions in housing insecurity play in increasing security more generally? This presentation reports results from a multi-institution project, Insecure Lives (https://sticerd.lse.ac.uk/case/_new/research/multiple-insecurities/), on the prevalence and experience of housing, work, income, food, health, and care insecurities, using literature, data from Understanding Society, and interviews with people experiencing multiple insecurities in different parts of England.

Biography

Becky Tunstall is former Director of the Centre for Housing Policy at the University of York, and visiting professor at the Centre for the Analysis of Social Exclusion at LSE. She is author of The fall and rise of social housing: 100 years on 20 estates, and and Stay Home, Housing and home in the UK during the Covid-19 pandemic. Most recently she was the project manager on the Insecure Lives project.