Fran Bennett is a Senior Research and Teaching Fellow at the Oxford Institute of Social Policy.

Fran works at Oxford in a part-time capacity, and she has a particular interest in social security policy, gender issues, poverty and participatory ways of working.

In a self-employed capacity, she has also written extensively on social policy issues for the UK government, NGOs and others. With Professor Jonathan Bradshaw, she is part of the UK team of independent experts in the European Social Policy Network for the European Commission.

Fran chairs the editorial board of the Journal of Poverty and Social Justice, having been a co-editor. She is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences and an associate of its international advisory group.

She worked for the Child Poverty Action Group from 1983-93, as deputy director and then director, and in the late 1990s was a policy advisor on UK and EU poverty issues for Oxfam. She is an active member of the Women’s Budget Group and now chairs the policy advisory group for Oxfam’s work in the UK.