New movements for social justice from the 1970s delivered searching critiques of the discipline and practice of social policy and the welfare state. But how far have such perspectives since influenced social policy as a discipline and practice?

Join Fiona Williams for the 2018 Sidney Ball Memorial Lecture as she explores how contemporary social movements – especially those around gender, race, migration, disability, austerity and the environment – pose material, political and ethical questions as to how we are to live our lives. These questions are crucial to imagining what form an alternative, transformational social policy might take.

Fiona Williams, OBE, FBA, FASS, is Emeritus Professor of Social Policy at the University of Leeds, Honorary Professor at the Social Policy Research Centre at the University of New South Wales, and Research Affiliate at COMPAS, University of Oxford. She is co-editor of the Journal of the British Academy and editorial trustee of Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State and Society.

Organised by Oxford University’s Department of Social Policy and Intervention, this annual lecture series presents the very best research in our field. The lecture will be followed by a drinks reception.