Role: Professor

Email: Francesca.Gains@manchester.ac.uk

Tel: +44 161 275-4895

Websites

• School of Social Sciences

 

Francesca Gains is a Professor of Public Policy in the School of Social Sciences, and was formerly Postgraduate Director for Politics and a Senior Research Fellow of the Institute for Political and Economic Governance at the University of Manchester. Before entering academia she worked in local government and the probation service, and has had both government funded and Parliamentary research experience.  Her research agenda explores the relationship between political management arrangements and policy outcomes.  Her most recent project involves an investigation of the politics of regulatory decisions using Impact Assessment data produced in Whitehall Departments.

Francesca is also involved in a long term research agenda exploring developments in the gender policy machinery and gender policy making both in the UK core executive and comparatively. She recently conducted research on 'Pathways to Power', the routes to representation and barriers faced by under-represented groups for the Equality and Human Rights Commission -(see http://www.equalityhumanrights.com/uploaded_files/research/pathways_to_politics.pdf).  In 2012 she was awarded the Best Paper in Comparative Policy at the 2011 American Political Science Association conference  (with collaborators Claire Annesley and Isabelle Engeli).

Previously she has worked on a number of government sponsored research projects most recently completing a five year evaluation of constitutional reform in English local government (see http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20100513032259/http://communities.gov.uk/documents/localgovernment/pdf/496710.pdf  and received the 2008 Herbert Kaufman Award for the Best Paper in Public Administration at the 2007 American Political Science Association Conference for research examining bureaucratic policy preferences (with Peter John).

Before beginning work on the introduction of new constitutions in local government, her earlier research was in the introduction of new political management arrangements in central government through the establishment of executive agencies.  She recently provided written evidence (with Prof Gerry Stoker) to the Public Administration Select Committee enquiry into the work of special advisers  http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201213/cmselect/cmpubadm/writev/psa/psa.pdf