Ceridwen Roberts

Biography

Ceridwen Roberts is a Senior Research Fellow [part time] and a member of OXFLAP. She was formerly Director of the Family Policy Studies Centre** for 8 years until 2001. Prior to joining the FPSC she held research and management posts in Government and academia as an industrial sociologist. She was chair of the Social Research Association 2001-5 and is currently vice chair as well as chair of the Advisory Committee of the UK Centre for Longitudinal Studies. From 1998-2004 she was the UK expert on the European Commission’s Observatory on the Social Situation, Demography and Family. She is currently the social science adviser to the Food Standards Agency's Microbiological Safety Division and works with Neil Stewart Associates conference organisation to develop and chair conferences in social policy/care areas.

She is an Academician of the Academy of Social Sciences and sits on the Council; is a member of the Economic and Social Research Council Strategic Research Board as well as a number of ESRC advisory committees, and has been a member of various Nuffield and Joseph Rowntree Foundations’ advisory groups, and the Lord Chancellor’s Department’s Advisory Group on Marriage and Relationship Support. She is a Trustee of the Family Budget Unit; a member of the Advisory Group of the Relationship Foundation and the Advisory Group for the University of Surrey’s Department of Sociology. She is on the editorial panel of Policy Review Magazine and between 1994- 2007 was an associate member of the editorial board of Children and Society.

Her current research interests are in changing nature of family life and the interplay between family change and public policy. With colleagues at Oxford she works on the implications for parents and children of changes to adoption law, child contact and transparency and openness in the family courts as well as research on family networks and grandparents. Her other interests include the politics of social science research including ethical issues and knowledge transfer. She has lectured, published and appeared on TV and radio on a wide range of family policy issues.

**Note: the Family Policy Studies Centre, which was based in London, closed in 2001. However, its website is maintained by the Oxford department as is the FPSC library.