The Team
Professor Michael Parkinson CBE
Professor Michael Parkinson CBE is Director of the European Institute for Urban Affairs. He produced the ‘State of the English Cities’ Report for the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister in 2006, the authoritative analysis of cities in Britain. He currently leads the Department of Communities and Local Government’s expert panel on Neighbourhoods, Cities and Regions. He was Director of the Economic and Social Research Council’s Programme CITIES: Cohesion and Competitiveness, a major five-year research programme involving 25 Universities.
Michael acts as adviser on urban affairs to the European Commission, OECD, EUROCITIES, the Department of Communities and Local Government, the National Audit Office, the House of Commons Select Committees, the Core Cities and a range of cities in the UK. He lectures extensively nationally and internationally and is a regular contributor to the media.
Michael was made Commander of the British Empire for services to urban regeneration in 2007.
He is author or editor - singly or jointly – of over one hundred publications including:
• State of the English Cities (2006)
• Belfast: Where is It Going? (2007)
• The Visioning Study for Birmingham City Centre Masterplan (2007)
• Final Evaluation of Sheffield One URC (2007)
• Evaluation of New East Manchester URC (2006)
• Cardiff: A Competitive European City? (2006)
• State of the Cities: A Progress Report to the Delivering Sustainable Communities Summit (2005)
• Competitive Scottish Cities? Scotland’s Cities in the European Context (2005)
• Competitive European Cities: Where do the Core Cities Stand? (2004)
• City Matters: Competitiveness, Cohesion and Urban Governance (2004)
• Belfast: A Competitive City? (2004)
• Urban Neighbourhoods – Urban Studies (2001)
• The Urban Audit, Volume I and II (2000)
• The State of English Cities (2000)
• Urban Regeneration Companies (2000)
• Combating Social Exclusion: Lessons from area-based programmes in Europe (1998)
• Building Partnerships in the English Regions (1998)
• Strategic Responses to Area Regeneration: A Review and Research Agenda (1996).
• City Challenge: Interim National Evaluation (1996)
• Regional Government in Britain: An Economic Solution? (1996)
• Public/Private/Community Partnerships in Local Government (1995)
• Assessing the Impact of Urban Policy (1994)
• European Cities Towards 2000: Profiles, Policies and Prospects (1994)
• Cultural Policy and Urban Regeneration: The West European Experience (1993)
• Urbanisation and the Functions of Cities in the European Community (1992)
• Leadership and Urban Regeneration: Cities in North America and Western Europe (1990)
• Regenerating the Cities: The U.K. Crisis and the U.S. Experience (1988)
• Reshaping Local Government (1987)
• Liverpool on the Brink (1985)
• U.S. and U.K. Education Policy: A Decade of Reform (1979)
• The Labour Party and the Organisation of Secondary Education (1970)
Email: M.H.Parkinson@ljmu.ac.uk
Professor Hilary Russell has wide experience of leading major evaluation studies, such as the national interim evaluation of the City Challenge initiative. She was the long term independent evaluator for Liverpool City Challenge and Speke Garston Regeneration Partnership and conducted other SRB evaluations including North Huyton, Wythenshawe and Cityfocus in Liverpool city centre. She was the co-ordinator for the North West in the National Evaluation of New Deal for Communities and, following that, carried out numerous project evaluations and the end of scheme evaluation for Kensington Regeneration, the NDC programme in Liverpool. She took part in the national evaluation of Neighbourhood Management Pathfinders. She undertook a study for the LGA and the (then) Health Education Authority on the Links between public health and regeneration.
She has conducted various studies relating to community development and participation, such as the evaluation of the community development strategy of Tyne and Wear Development Corporation and Bootle City Challenge Community Involvement Strategy. She participated in the national evaluation of the Community Empowerment Fund, Community Chest and Community Learning Chest programmes and reviewed the lessons about community engagement coming out of the New Deal for Communities programme.
Hilary has had a longstanding interest in Local Strategic Partnerships. She first carried out the National Evaluation of New Commitment to Regeneration Partnerships – the forerunners to LSPs - for the Local Government Association and Joseph Rowntree Foundation. She was a member of the research team that conducted the Local Strategic Partnerships, Feasibility Study, Formative Evaluation and Action Research and she is currently leading the National Evaluation of Local Area Agreements and Local Strategic Partnerships for CLG. She has also recently been leading a study for the Equality and Human Rights Commission on the role of LSPs and LAAs in promoting equality.
Hilary has considerable experience of the voluntary, community and faith sectors. She served as a member of the Commission on the Future of the Voluntary Sector and has been a trustee of Liverpool Charity and Voluntary Services for many years. She co-edited Rooted in the City: recollections and assessments of 100 years of voluntary action in Liverpool (2010). She chairs the Churches Together on Merseyside Management Council, is a Lay Canon of Liverpool Cathedral and is a member of the North West Forum of Faiths.
Email: H.E.Russell@ljmu.ac.uk
Professor Richard Evans is an urban policy expert with extensive experience of evaluating the effectiveness of urban regeneration programmes and initiatives. Before entering academia, he held a number of planning and economic development posts in local government and became a Member of the Royal Town Planning Institute. He has conducted research for a wide variety of international and national public, private and charitable organisations on such subjects as Urban Development Corporations, the Action for Cities programme, Training and Enterprise Councils, Regional and Sub-Regional Partnerships, City Challenge, Single Regeneration Budget, Housing Plus and Housing Action Trusts. Past work has included: studies on urban competitiveness, social cohesion and urban governance in Liverpool and Manchester, funded by the ESRC; research and evaluation of various regeneration programmes including Single Regeneration Budget, Local Strategic Partnerships, Neighbourhood Regeneration Pathfinders and New Deal for Communities, much of which is ongoing. He has drafted a substantial part of the State of the English Cities report which deals with the impact of government policy on urban competitiveness, liveability and governance. Other current projects include the Mid-term Evaluation of New East Manchester Urban Regeneration Company and a report for the Housing Corporation on Housing Associations and the neighbourhoods and communities agenda. He serves as an advisor on the EU Framework 5-funded Urban Sprawl and Sustainable Development in Europe Project and on the Royal Town Planning Institute/Liverpool John Moores University Partnership Board.
Email: S.R.Evans@ljmu.ac.uk
Professor Richard Meegan joined the Institute in September 2002 as a Reader from the Department of Geography at the University of Liverpool where he was a Senior Lecturer and Associate Director of the Contemporary Research in Regional Economic Development (CRED) Research Unit. His research has ranged across urban and regional development, labour market change and community responses to the impact of economic restructuring and has been funded by central and local government, overseas planning and government agencies and a variety of research councils and foundations. With colleagues in Europaforum Wien and the Institute of Sociology for Spatial Planning and Architecture at the Vienna University of Technology, he has just completed a research project on ‘European Metropolitan Governance' funded as part of the 'New Orientations for Democracy In Europe' (NODE) research programme of the Federal Ministry for Education, Science and Culture of Austria. With Richard Evans he has also just completed a report for the Housing Corporation on Housing Associations and the neighbourhoods and communities agenda. Current projects include the Mid-term Evaluation of New East Manchester Urban Regeneration Company and the ongoing national evaluations of the New Deal for Communities Programme and Neighbourhood Management Pilots.
Email: R.A.Meegan@ljmu.ac.uk
Dr Gerwyn Jones is a Senior Research Fellow and joined the institute in 2008. He has undertaken research in the regeneration and social policy fields for the past ten years, working in both the private and public sectors. He has managed large scale national research and evaluation assignments for central government departments, such as the Department for Work and Pensions and the Department for Communities and Local Government, as well as smaller scale research projects for various Local Authority clients across England and Wales. Since joining the institute he has been involved in several high profile assignments and has contributed to and co-authored a number of influential studies, including: ‘The Credit Crunch and Regeneration: Impact and Implications’ for DCLG; ‘The Credit Crunch, Recession and Regeneration in the North of England’ for the Northern Way; ‘An Evaluation of Kensington Regeneration 2000-2009’ for Kensington NDC; ‘CPR Regeneration Interim Review’ for CPR Regeneration URC & partners; ‘Durham City Vision Interim Review’ for Durham City Vision & partners.
Email: G.Jones@ljmu.ac.uk
Jay Karecha is a Researcher at the European Institute for Urban Affairs, having joined the Institute in 2004. Jay is currently working on evaluations for Tees Valley Regeneration URC, Derby Cityscape URC, and Nottingham Regeneration Ltd, with responsibility for analysing financial spend and outputs, and updating socio-economic baselines. Prior to this he examined competitiveness in Cardiff, for Cardiff Council, placing the city in Welsh, UK, and European contexts. He has a range of experience including benchmarking European cities for the Compete Interreg 3c project, and carrying out data analysis for the State of the English Cities report for the ODPM. Prior to joining the institute Jay worked as a research assistant on an EU funded project examining sustainable urban development in Europe. His key skills are data analysis, measurement of change, questionnaire design, survey analysis, data-mining of online information sources, IT skills, management of records & databases, research design, and report writing.
Jean Parry is the Institute's administrator. She has looked after all its business affairs since it opened and is available to deal quickly with any enquiries about us.
Email: J.Parry@ljmu.ac.uk
Professor Chris Couch is an associate member of the Institute for research purposes. His interests lie mainly in the application of urban economic and planning theory to aspects of urban planning and regeneration, particularly in a European comparative context; also the study of urban change and policy in the Liverpool area. He teaches on town planning programmes within the School of the Built Environment at Liverpool John Moores University, where he was formerly Head of Planning and Housing Studies and Director of Research. He also teaches in the Department of Civic Design at Liverpool University. He is a member of the RTPI Partnership Panel; Chair of RTPI Partnership Board for Leeds Metropolitan University; RTPI Dialogue member for University College Cork. He has been an external PhD examiner at various UK and European universities.
Email: C.R.Couch@ljmu.ac.uk
