Professor Karen Rowlingson

Board Member

Karen Rowlingson (YHEC board member) is Interim Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Professor of Social Policy at the University of York, where she focuses her research on social security and taxation policy within the context of growing poverty, wealth, and economic inequality.

Before her time at York, Karen held key senior leadership roles at the University of Birmingham, including Deputy Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Engagement and Impact and Deputy Head of the College of Social Sciences. She also served as the Founding Director of CHASM (the Research Centre on Household Assets and Savings Management) at Birmingham in 2010 and remains an Honorary Professor at the Centre.

Throughout her career, Karen’s work has been strongly mixed-methods and applied, driven by a deep personal commitment to social justice stemming from growing up in an economically disadvantaged part of London in the 1970s. She served as Specialist Advisor to the House of Lords Select Committee on Financial Exclusion (2016 to 2017) and has played a leading national role in shaping her discipline, serving as Chair of the Social Policy Association (2019 to 2022) and Chair of the REF 2029 sub-panel for Social Work and Social Policy. A Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences since 2013, she is currently supporting the Revisiting Rowntree project in York, exploring how modern opportunity and inequality are shaped by the ownership of land, property, and community assets.