New Research Handbook on Social Policy and Employment published
Content
A new Research Handbook on Social Policy and Employment co-edited by Social Policy colleague Elke Heins has been published by Edward Elgar. The handbook explores how social policies have been adapted and remodelled in response to transformations in work and employment in the 21st century. It outlines the history of the welfare-work relationship, assesses the current state of the global workforce and provides theoretical and practical analyses of the work-employment-social policy relationship.
The final section of the book, on the future of work and welfare, features contributions from two Edinburgh colleagues. Mohammad Amir Anwar contributes a chapter on the platform economy and Hayley Bennett a chapter on digital social policy.
The handbook has been praised as “[having] an extraordinarily comprehensive historical and global range, placing current developments in a strong perspective of historical development and including countries in the global south in a manner rarely attempted”.
It is published in the Elgar Handbooks in Social Policy and Welfare series which includes further work by University of Edinburgh colleagues, highlighting the leading role of the Social Policy subject area in the field of comparative and international social and labour market policy research.
Full details: Gaby Ramia, Zoë Irving, Elke Heins and Ricardo Velázquez Leyer (eds), Research Handbook on Social Policy and Employment, Edward Elgar Publishing, October 2025, 432pp.
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