Dr Steve Cunningham

Senior Lecturer in Social Policy
School of Health, Social Work and Sport

Steve teaches on a range of undergraduate and postgraduate courses across the School. His specific areas of interest are welfare history, poverty and social security, the sociology of welfare, asylum and immigration policy, child labour and children’s activism. Steve also supervises a number of PhD candidates. Recent and current areas of supervision include the poor law; child trafficking; the funding/employment of undergraduate students; Higher Education reform.

Steve is course leader for our BA (Hons) Social Policy and Sociology programme. He is the co-author of Schools Out: the Hidden History of Britain’s School Student Strikes (Bookmarks, 2016). He has also published two jointly authored key social work textbooks, Sociology and Social Work, 2nd edition (Sage, 2014) and Social Policy and Social Work: An Introduction, 2nd edition (Sage, 2017).

Steve became an academic member of staff at the University of Central Lancashire in 1995, after studying here as an undergraduate and postgraduate student. In 2000, he was awarded his PhD, which focused upon the development of child labour policy in Britain in the twentieth century. Since joining us, he has held a number of course leadership positions and contributed to the development of the School’s portfolio of social science and qualifying social work courses.

Steve’s research and publications reflect his wider academic interests in welfare history and social justice. His co-authored book looking at the ‘hidden history’ of school student strikes draws attention to the fact that the recent school strike movement for climate change, spearheaded by Greta Thunberg and other young activists, is not a particularly new phenomenon. It documents the inspiring history of school student strikes and looks at the potential lessons for today. Steve’s publications on child labour follow a similar theme, focusing on the relevance of historical inquiry to more recent debates about child labour. In other published work, Steve has set out the case for embracing a broad social justice and sociological approach to social work education and practice.

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Dr Steve Cunningham

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