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

Research Overview

Analytically, Catherine’s work seeks to interrogate how government engages with citizens and communities through policy design and implementation, service delivery and participation, and how citizens and communities can act to build power to effect change and deepen local democracy.

Catherine is currently working to disseminate the findings from two major research awards on social innovation and co-production in urban governance:
• Jam and Justice: co-producing urban governance for social innovation (ESRC/ Mistra Urban Futures funded, 2016 to 2020)
Research findings have so far been published in journals including, Futures, Social Policy & Administration, and the International Journal of Social Research Methodology, both articles have considered how different ways of knowing can be brought together within research.

• Smart Urban Intermediaries (Joint Partnership Initiative Urban Europe/ ESRC funded, 2017 to 2020)
Research findings have so far been published in Public Administration Review and Urban Studies, looking at how the practices of situated agents within public services, practice and communities can inform urban transformation.

In parallel, she is involved in new research collaborations on institutional design and complexity in urban governance, the governance of the new commons, the role of design in policy-making, and gendering discretion in policy implementation.

Catherine is a methodological pluralist with particular expertise in qualitative and participatory methods. More recently, she has become interested in using methods that can help to combine qualitative richness with systematic comparison.