Professor Catherine Durose BA (Hons), MA (Research), PhD, SFHEA

Personal Statement

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Catherine is Professor of Public Policy, and Co-Director of the Heseltine Institute for Public Policy, Practice and Place at the University of Liverpool. She is recognised as a leading expert on urban governance and public policy, and has written widely on policy design and implementation, devolution, urban transformation, social and democratic innovation, and participation. Empirically, her work has been focused at urban, city-regional, local, and neighbourhood levels.

Catherine is particularly well-known for her work on co-production, how bringing together different forms of expertise can provide an innovative means of addressing complexity and uncertainty in governance and policy. She has also recently written for Nature on how the academy can better acknowledge and embrace co-production in research.

Her work is highly cited, and has been published in leading peer-reviewed academic journals, including Political Studies, Governance, Public Administration Review and Urban Studies. Catherine has also been involved in securing and delivering high-value research awards from funders, including the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), Arts and Humanities Research Council and Joint Partnership Initiative Urban Europe.

Catherine is a collaborative and engaged scholar, and has worked extensively with a wide-range of policy, practice and community partners, and consulted to the UK government and Equality and Human Rights Commission. Catherine is also a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, and has specialised in post-graduate teaching of students in policy and practice roles seeking to advance their public service careers. She has taught at the University of Birmingham, University of Manchester and De Montfort University. She regularly contributes to comment and analysis, including recently to The Conversation and Municipal Journal. At the Heseltine Institute, Catherine leads on delivering a five-year ESRC IAA-funded training series on policy impact for social science researchers.

Catherine was the recipient of the Joni Lovenduski Prize for Outstanding Professional Achievement in a Mid-Career Scholar in 2020, awarded by the UK’s Political Studies Association. Before joining the University of Liverpool, she was Director of Research at the Institute of Local Government Studies, and the School of Government at the University of Birmingham, where she retains an Honorary Professorial position. She has also held International Visiting Research Fellowships at the Great Cities Institute, University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), the Institute for Governance and Policy at the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB), Tilburg University’s School of Politics and Public Administration, and the Australia and New Zealand School of Government (ANZSOG). She is Chair of the Editorial Board for Local Government Studies.

Catherine is institutional leader on key agendas of civic engagement, and equality, diversity and inclusion. At the University of Liverpool, she convenes the Liverpool Feminist City network and the Women@Liverpool staff equality network by and for academic women across disciplines and career stages. She acts as a mentor to early career researchers across a range of initiatives.

She can be found on twitter @profcatdurose and LinkedIn