Professor Kevin Farnsworth

Profile

Recent highlights

• The Conversation article, How governments are helping big companies pay less tax, with Gary Fooks, Corporate Criminologist, Aston University
• Guardian 'Comment is free' piece "I'm glad Corbyn is challenging handouts to business. It's time to unpick corporate welfare."
• Reference to corporate welfare in the Shadow Chancellor's speech to the Labour Party Conference
• Guardian article: Britain’s corporate welfare is out of control – increasing it makes no sense
  
• Guardian article: The £93bn handshake: businesses pocket huge subsidies and tax breaks
• The corporate welfare watch database
• Witness to the Business, Innovation and Skills Committee Inquiry into Government Support for Business, Tuesday 11th November 2014 - 10:17 minutes into the programme
• Interview for the Tax Justice Network about Corporate Welfare, March 2015 - 19:22 and 24:55 minutes into the programme
• 'Cut benefits? Yes, let's start with our £85bn corporate welfare handout' - Aditya Chakrabortty, The Guardian, Comment is Free, Monday 6th October 2014

Areas of expertise

• Political economy of welfare states
• The power and influence of business on social and public policy
• Corporate welfare
• Welfare states and economic crisis

Biography

I joined the University of York in September 2014. Prior to that I was senior lecturer at the University of Sheffield and I’ve held visiting Professorships at the University of Toronto and Carleton University, Canada. I hold a BA (Hons) in Social Policy, MSc in Research Methods and PhD in Social Policy. I have published widely on business and public policy, corporate power, corporate welfare and economic crisis and welfare states.

Professional activities

• Joint Editor of the Journal of International and Comparative Social Policy
• Joint organiser of 2013 and 2014 Social Policy Association Annual Conferences in Sheffield (with Zoe Irving)
• Member of the Executive Committee of the UK Social Policy Association, 2005-2008

Teaching

I teach across a number of modules at the undergraduate and postgraduate levels. My modules cover a range of issues, but two key questions are at their heart: why does inequality persist, and why do some governments appear to be so unwilling or unable to do anything about it? My aim is to arm students with the necessary tools - theoretical and empirical - to critique their own perceptions of who benefits from the welfare state, who (or what) shapes it and what are the effect of social policies (or a lack of social policies) on individuals and society more broadly. I encourage students to not only reflect upon the key problems and challenges that confront societies, but to come up with solutions to those problems. I currently convene Welfare States and the Economic Crisis and teach on The Policy Process.

Research

Research

My research interests centre on three key areas:

1. the relative power and influence of business and labour on governments, especially with regard to social and public policy;
2. the economic crisis and welfare states;
3. corporate welfare (state assistance to corporations) and its relationship with social welfare within various welfare systems.

My current work includes a book on British Corporate Welfare and two further books on the impact of austerity politics on welfare states (with Zoe Irving).