Dr David Young

Biography

David is a British Academy Postdoctoral fellow at the Centre for Research on Inclusive Society at the University of Salford. His research focuses on social security policy and the experience of income change and insecurity. His current fellowship ‘Caring about time and money’ will use qualitative secondary data analysis, qualitative longitudinal and financial diary methods to better understand the temporal experiences of paid care sector workers claiming Universal Credit. Since 2016, he has worked as a researcher on a number of qualitative longitudinal and mixed methods projects following different groups of social security claimants over time. These include the Welfare at a Social Distance Project that focused on social security and employment support during the Covid-19 pandemic and the Sanctions, Support and Service Leavers project that tracked the experiences of military veterans from 2017 to 2024. More recently he has been a researcher on the Changing Realities project, which uses participatory and online platform methods to work with low-income families, and the Safety Nets project, which focuses on devolved social security provision in the four nations. His doctoral research at the Institute for Policy Research (University of Bath) involved the use of financial diaries to track the income and expenditures of low-income households. Wider research interests include welfare reform, disability assessments, and the health and wellbeing impacts of advice services. He is a founder member of the Money, Security and Social Policy (MSSP) early career research network and a member of the Social Policy Association.