Professor Mary Daly
Professor Mary Daly is an Emerita Fellow, Green Templeton College and Professor Emerita of Sociology and Social Policy, Department of Social Policy and Intervention, University of Oxford. She is founder of the Care Initiative at college.
Professor Daly is a comparative social policy scholar. Long-term care is a major focus of her work. Her approach conceives of care broadly, grounded in an understanding of the human condition as one of interdependence and vulnerability and of care as integral to all societies. Her work understands care systems to include family care, informal unpaid care and formal care. She is interested in what constitutes ‘good care’ and also in care as a source of inequality and disadvantage. She has a particular interest in gender and intersectional inequalities.
Her research has explored the different policy models of care provision in different countries, in Europe especially. She adopts a configurational approach to understanding how societies organise care for children and adults, linking political, social, economic and ecological factors. Among the other fields on which she has researched and published are family policy; gender equality; child poverty and well-being; the social policy of the European Union; social rights; poverty and welfare. A sociologist and social policy scholar by background, her approach is comparative and interdisciplinary.
Professor Daly has a keen interest in the reform of care policies and how change happens or can be blocked. Her work has informed policy and practice in a range of settings, especially the UN organisations and the European Union.
Professor Daly set up the Care Initiative in college in 2014 to initiate debate and discussion about the challenges involved for the UK and elsewhere in organising resources to provide good care for those who need it and to improve the conditions of the many people who provide care. The proposed new Centre for the future of long-term care is designed as an independent, evidence driven centre focused on bringing about change and reform. It will focus especially on translating knowledge for practical change.
Mary Daly’s research has been supported, inter alia, by the Economic and Social Research Council, the EU, Joseph Rowntree Foundation, Council of Europe, UNWomen and UNICEF. She is a British Academy fellow, a member of the Royal Irish Academy and a fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences.
