In the last few of months, we have welcomed several new members of staff to WISERD, to work on a variety of new and existing projects.
This week we’ll be focusing on two Cardiff based members of staff – Dr Martijn Hogerbrugge and Dr Luke Cowie. Here, they tell us a bit about their backgrounds, research interests, and what they’ll be doing at WISERD.
Dr Martijn Hogerbrugge
I recently took up the position of quantitative research associate within the Civil Society project. I am responsible for research within the theme of “Ageing and intergenerational relations”, and will be examining what factors affect the degree to which older people participate in their community, as well as relating their levels of participation to outcomes like health and well-being. Special attention will be paid to the influence of an older person’s belief that one can actively (re)construct one’s social surrounding, the extent to which the older person feels the need to leave something behind for future generations, and an older person’s perception of crime, in particular fear of crime.
Prior to joining WISERD, I conducted my doctoral research at the Interuniversity Center for Social Science Theory and Methodology (ICS) at Utrecht University. Using various statistical methods, such as structural equation modelling, latent transition analysis, and logistic regression, I showed how relationships with extended family and the structure of the family network influence the occurrence of negative events such as relationship dissolution, psychological problems, financial difficulties, or addiction, and how such events affect family relationships in return. During my appointment as a doctoral candidate I also worked at the Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute (NIDI) on the release of the third wave data of the Netherlands Kinship Panel Study (NKPS), and the pre-harmonization of the data for inclusion in the European Gender and Generations Programme (GGP). I recently prepared data from the fourth wave of the NKPS atErasmus University Rotterdam and will be released in the upcoming weeks.
Although I specialized in family sociology during my doctoral training, my interests extend to other related areas, such as demography, social gerontology, and research methodology. Moreover, as a member of the ICS, I acquainted myself with a diverse range of research topics, including the analysis of social networks and social capital, game-theoretical social experiments, inter-ethnic relations, and social stratification.
I am looking forward to adapting my work on intergenerational relations and the life course to the Civil Society project.
Dr Luke Cowie
I recently joined WISERD as the Cardiff Research Fellow on the All Wales Academic Social Care Research Collaboration (ASCC). My project will be investigating the potential scope for innovative delivery of adult social care by means of licensing, social enterprises, co-operatives and not for profit organisations. During this short project I will be conducting a review of the relevant literature and conducting a comparative case study on several such models of social care provision in Wales.
I am an experienced qualitative researcher, and have undertaken research into various topics relating to health and wellbeing. Prior to joining WISERD, I worked at Cardiff University on the NISCHR funded Patient Safety and Healthcare Quality Registered Research Group (PSHQ RRG). And prior to this I held two research positions at King’s College London, in the Department of Primary Care and Public Health and latterly in the NIHR Patient Safety and Service Quality Research Centre, looking at patient experiences of continuity of care and the organizational regulation of innovative clinical procedures respectively.
My research interests comprise a wide range of topics that can be broadly contrued as qualitative and mixed methods approaches to the study of health and wellbeing, particularly from the perspectives of different stakeholders, such as patients and service users. My research to date has principally been within the topics of continuity of care, care quality and patient safety, the innovation and regulation of clinical procedures, patient involvement and patient experiences of chronic illness.
I am keen to work closely with the WISERD team, and in particular those working on the Social Care, Health and Wellbing theme and colleagues in the Cardiff Institute of Society, Health and Wellbeing (CISHeW) in order to develop future work in this area.