Kate Summers
Biographic Data
| ID | 159883 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Kate Summers |
| GIVEN NAMES | Kate |
| FAMILY NAME | Summers |
| SIGNATURE | SUMMERS K |
| AFFILIATIONS | London School of Economics and Political Science |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-9964-0259 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 10 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 20 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 10 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2020 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Ending participatory research projects: Entangled temporalities, endy moments and afterlives
Bringing Participatory Research projects to an end poses particular challenges, with scholars often articulating affects of guilt and disappointment at unfinished endings. A mismatch between institutionally defined deadlines, and the relational and political ongoingness of participatory research create contradictory demands. Drawing on three anchor cases, we offer three concepts to support conceptualising and planning for project endings. First, …
Benefits Conditionality in the United Kingdom: Is It Common, and Is It Perceived to Be Reasonable
Programme‐level data suggest that increasing numbers of claimants are subject to work‐related behavioural requirements in countries like the United Kingdom. Likewise, academic qualitative research has suggested that conditionality is pervasive within the benefits system, and is often felt to be unreasonable. However, there is little quantitative evidence on the extent or experience of conditionality from claimants' perspectives. We fill this gap …
Claiming deservingness: The durability of social security claimant discourses during the Covid-19 pandemic
The Covid-19 pandemic created extraordinary conditions for social protection systems globally, with both material and discursive implications. In the UK, these unprecedented circumstances led to an influx of (first-time) social security claims, expectations of increased social solidarity and more positive public discussion around benefits. One might expect this to affect attitudes towards claiming. This article focuses on the accounts of claimant…
Welfare attitudes in a crisis: How Covid exceptionalism undermined greater solidarity
COVID-19 had the potential to dramatically increase public support for welfare. It was a time of apparent increased solidarity, of apparently deserving claimants, and of increasingly widespread exposure to the benefits system. However, there are also reasons to expect the opposite effect: an increase in financial strain fostering austerity and self-interest, and thermostatic responses to increasing welfare generosity. In this paper, we investigat…
Guiding principles for social security policy: Outcomes from a bottom‐up approach
Covid‐19 has highlighted the inadequacy of UK social security but also the lack of consensus among progressive actors about what would be a better system. One way forward is to focus on the principles that should underpin social security. We present outcomes from a project in which principles were considered by a panel of Expert by Experience benefit claimants. We argue that while scholars often engage in descriptively identifying social security…
Mediating the claim? How ‘local ecosystems of support’ shape the operation and experience of UK social security
Local state and third sector actors routinely provide support to help people navigate their right to social security and mediate their chequered relationship to it. COVID‐19 has not only underlined the significance of these actors in the claims‐making process, but also just how vulnerable those working within ‘local ecosystems of support’ are to external shocks and their own internal pressures. Drawing on qualitative fieldwork with organisations …
Deliberating Inequality: A Blueprint for Studying the Social Formation of Beliefs about Economic Inequality
In most contemporary societies, people underestimate the extent of economic inequality, resulting in lower support for taxation and redistribution than might be expressed by better informed citizens. We still know little, however, about how understandings of inequality arise, and therefore about where perceptions and misperceptions of it might come from. This methodological article takes one step toward filling this gap by developing a research d…
The long and short of it: The temporal significance of wealth and income
In the literatures on the lived experience of poverty and richness temporal dimensions are underappreciated. Comparing qualitative interviews with those at opposite ends of the income and wealth distributions in the UK, we examine a temporal contrast: while “poor” participants experience money as flows of income which focus orientation to the present and constrain orientation to the future, “rich” participants experience money not only as flows o…
Universal simplicity? The alleged simplicity of Universal Credit from administrative and claimant perspectives
A key aim of Universal Credit is to simplify the social security system. While several aspects of its introduction have received critical attention, this overarching aim continues to receive acceptance and support. Drawing on two empirical studies involving means-tested benefit claimants, we aim to deconstruct the idea of ‘simplicity’ as a feature of social security design and argue that it is contingent on perspective. We suggest that claims of …
For the greater good? Ethical reflections on interviewing the ‘rich’ and ‘poor’ in qualitative research
There is increasing emphasis on understanding economic advantage alongside disadvantage – on studying both ‘poverty’ and ‘riches’. This trend prompts and requires new ethical reflection. I argue that in qualitative interview research, a clearer distinction needs to be drawn between ethical commitments to individual research participants, and the group(s) to which they belong. This distinction is often elided in ethics guidelines and when research…
Universal simplicity? The alleged simplicity of Universal Credit from administrative and claimant perspectives
A key aim of Universal Credit is to simplify the social security system. While several aspects of its introduction have received critical attention, this overarching aim continues to receive acceptance and support. Drawing on two empirical studies involving means-tested benefit claimants, we aim to deconstruct the idea of ‘simplicity’ as a feature of social security design and argue that it is contingent on perspective. We suggest that claims of …
The long and short of it: The temporal significance of wealth and income
In the literatures on the lived experience of poverty and richness temporal dimensions are underappreciated. Comparing qualitative interviews with those at opposite ends of the income and wealth distributions in the UK, we examine a temporal contrast: while “poor” participants experience money as flows of income which focus orientation to the present and constrain orientation to the future, “rich” participants experience money not only as flows o…
Mediating the claim? How ‘local ecosystems of support’ shape the operation and experience of UK social security
Local state and third sector actors routinely provide support to help people navigate their right to social security and mediate their chequered relationship to it. COVID‐19 has not only underlined the significance of these actors in the claims‐making process, but also just how vulnerable those working within ‘local ecosystems of support’ are to external shocks and their own internal pressures. Drawing on qualitative fieldwork with organisations …
For the greater good? Ethical reflections on interviewing the ‘rich’ and ‘poor’ in qualitative research
There is increasing emphasis on understanding economic advantage alongside disadvantage – on studying both ‘poverty’ and ‘riches’. This trend prompts and requires new ethical reflection. I argue that in qualitative interview research, a clearer distinction needs to be drawn between ethical commitments to individual research participants, and the group(s) to which they belong. This distinction is often elided in ethics guidelines and when research…
Deliberating Inequality: A Blueprint for Studying the Social Formation of Beliefs about Economic Inequality
In most contemporary societies, people underestimate the extent of economic inequality, resulting in lower support for taxation and redistribution than might be expressed by better informed citizens. We still know little, however, about how understandings of inequality arise, and therefore about where perceptions and misperceptions of it might come from. This methodological article takes one step toward filling this gap by developing a research d…
Welfare attitudes in a crisis: How Covid exceptionalism undermined greater solidarity
COVID-19 had the potential to dramatically increase public support for welfare. It was a time of apparent increased solidarity, of apparently deserving claimants, and of increasingly widespread exposure to the benefits system. However, there are also reasons to expect the opposite effect: an increase in financial strain fostering austerity and self-interest, and thermostatic responses to increasing welfare generosity. In this paper, we investigat…
Guiding principles for social security policy: Outcomes from a bottom‐up approach
Covid‐19 has highlighted the inadequacy of UK social security but also the lack of consensus among progressive actors about what would be a better system. One way forward is to focus on the principles that should underpin social security. We present outcomes from a project in which principles were considered by a panel of Expert by Experience benefit claimants. We argue that while scholars often engage in descriptively identifying social security…
Universal simplicity? The alleged simplicity of Universal Credit from administrative and claimant perspectives
A key aim of Universal Credit is to simplify the social security system. While several aspects of its introduction have received critical attention, this overarching aim continues to receive acceptance and support. Drawing on two empirical studies involving means-tested benefit claimants, we aim to deconstruct the idea of ‘simplicity’ as a feature of social security design and argue that it is contingent on perspective. We suggest that claims of …
For the greater good? Ethical reflections on interviewing the ‘rich’ and ‘poor’ in qualitative research
There is increasing emphasis on understanding economic advantage alongside disadvantage – on studying both ‘poverty’ and ‘riches’. This trend prompts and requires new ethical reflection. I argue that in qualitative interview research, a clearer distinction needs to be drawn between ethical commitments to individual research participants, and the group(s) to which they belong. This distinction is often elided in ethics guidelines and when research…
The long and short of it: The temporal significance of wealth and income
In the literatures on the lived experience of poverty and richness temporal dimensions are underappreciated. Comparing qualitative interviews with those at opposite ends of the income and wealth distributions in the UK, we examine a temporal contrast: while “poor” participants experience money as flows of income which focus orientation to the present and constrain orientation to the future, “rich” participants experience money not only as flows o…
Guiding principles for social security policy: Outcomes from a bottom‐up approach
Covid‐19 has highlighted the inadequacy of UK social security but also the lack of consensus among progressive actors about what would be a better system. One way forward is to focus on the principles that should underpin social security. We present outcomes from a project in which principles were considered by a panel of Expert by Experience benefit claimants. We argue that while scholars often engage in descriptively identifying social security…
Mediating the claim? How ‘local ecosystems of support’ shape the operation and experience of UK social security
Local state and third sector actors routinely provide support to help people navigate their right to social security and mediate their chequered relationship to it. COVID‐19 has not only underlined the significance of these actors in the claims‐making process, but also just how vulnerable those working within ‘local ecosystems of support’ are to external shocks and their own internal pressures. Drawing on qualitative fieldwork with organisations …
Deliberating Inequality: A Blueprint for Studying the Social Formation of Beliefs about Economic Inequality
In most contemporary societies, people underestimate the extent of economic inequality, resulting in lower support for taxation and redistribution than might be expressed by better informed citizens. We still know little, however, about how understandings of inequality arise, and therefore about where perceptions and misperceptions of it might come from. This methodological article takes one step toward filling this gap by developing a research d…
Welfare attitudes in a crisis: How Covid exceptionalism undermined greater solidarity
COVID-19 had the potential to dramatically increase public support for welfare. It was a time of apparent increased solidarity, of apparently deserving claimants, and of increasingly widespread exposure to the benefits system. However, there are also reasons to expect the opposite effect: an increase in financial strain fostering austerity and self-interest, and thermostatic responses to increasing welfare generosity. In this paper, we investigat…
Benefits Conditionality in the United Kingdom: Is It Common, and Is It Perceived to Be Reasonable
Programme‐level data suggest that increasing numbers of claimants are subject to work‐related behavioural requirements in countries like the United Kingdom. Likewise, academic qualitative research has suggested that conditionality is pervasive within the benefits system, and is often felt to be unreasonable. However, there is little quantitative evidence on the extent or experience of conditionality from claimants' perspectives. We fill this gap …
Claiming deservingness: The durability of social security claimant discourses during the Covid-19 pandemic
The Covid-19 pandemic created extraordinary conditions for social protection systems globally, with both material and discursive implications. In the UK, these unprecedented circumstances led to an influx of (first-time) social security claims, expectations of increased social solidarity and more positive public discussion around benefits. One might expect this to affect attitudes towards claiming. This article focuses on the accounts of claimant…
Ending participatory research projects: Entangled temporalities, endy moments and afterlives
Bringing Participatory Research projects to an end poses particular challenges, with scholars often articulating affects of guilt and disappointment at unfinished endings. A mismatch between institutionally defined deadlines, and the relational and political ongoingness of participatory research create contradictory demands. Drawing on three anchor cases, we offer three concepts to support conceptualising and planning for project endings. First, …
Political science (8 works) · Economics (7 works) · Law (7 works) · Sociology (7 works) · Housing, Finance, and Neoliberalism (5 works) · Law (5 works) · Social Policy and Reform Studies (5 works) · Economic growth (4 works) · Employment and Welfare Studies (4 works) · Politics (4 works)