Dr Emma Wincup

Dr Emma Wincup

Department of Social Policy, Sociology and Criminology
Honorary Senior Research Fellow

Contact details

Address
Department of Social Policy, Sociology and Criminology
Muirhead Tower
University of Birmingham
Edgbaston
Birmingham
B15 2TT
UK

Dr Emma Wincup is Research Manager (Qualitative) at the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, a York-based social change organisation working to solve poverty. Emma’s research focuses on monitoring poverty and destitution, particularly using qualitative and participatory methods. She is interested in the drivers of poverty, understanding who is most at risk of poverty and why, and the impact of living in poverty.

Qualifications

  • PhD Criminology 1997, Cardiff University
  • PG Dip Social Science Research Methods 1995, Cardiff University
  • MPhil Criminology 1994, University of Cambridge
  • BA Social and Political Sciences 1993, University of Cambridge

Biography

Dr Emma Wincup joined the Joseph Rowntree Foundation in 2019, where she heads up their qualitative research programme on poverty.  Prior to joining JRF, Emma was a university academic for over twenty years, holding posts at the Universities of Leeds, Kent, Cardiff, Bangor and Cambridge. Her most recent academic research focused on drugs but she has also published widely on the interconnections between crime and social policy and the resettlement of former prisoners.

Dr Wincup continues to work, in an independent capacity, on drug-related research.

Research

Research interests

  • Poverty and destitution
  • Drug policy
  • Participatory and qualitative methodologies

Current projects

In addition to her programme of work on poverty and destitution at JRF, Dr Wincup is currently working on the Relations Study, an innovative ESRC-funded research project to investigate the provision of treatment for parents who use drugs in the UK, in a bid to understand how they interact with health and social care services. 

Other activities

  • 2019 – Research Manager (Qualitative) at the Joseph Rowntree Foundation
  • 2019 – Trustee, Progress to Change
  • Editorial Board member, Qualitative Research
  • Academic Fellow, Howard League for Penal Reform

Publications

Monaghan, M., Wincup, E. and Hamilton, I. (2021) Scandalous decisions: explaining shifts in medicinal cannabis policy, Addiction, 116: 1925-1933

Andersson, C., Wincup, E., Best, D. and Irving, J. (2020) Gender and recovery pathways in the UK, Drugs: Education, Prevention and Policy, 28: 454-464

Whittaker, A., Martin, F., Olsen, A. and Wincup, E. (2020) Governing parental drug use in the UK: what’s hidden in “Hidden Harm”?, Contemporary Drug Problems, 47: 170-187.

Wincup, E. (2019) Producing the vulnerable subject in English drug policy, International Journal of Drug Policy, 80, June 2020, 102525.

Wincup, E. (2019) Women as vulnerable subjects: a gendered reading of the English and Irish drug strategies, Addictive Behaviours, 98, November 2019, 105995.

Wincup, E. (2019) Living ‘good lives’: using mentoring to supporting desistance and recovery, Addiction Research and Theory, 27: 37-46.

Monaghan M., Wincup E. and Wicker, K. (2018) Experts, expertise and drug policymaking, Howard Journal of Crime and Justice, 57: 422-441.

Wincup, E. (2017) Criminological Research: Understanding Qualitative Approaches, 2nd edn. London: Sage.

Expertise