PhD Candidate

Levana is a doctoral candidate researching the impact of Universal Credit on low income and non-working families. 

Research

Levana is interested in:

• social security
• welfare reform
• gender, care and family policy
• labour market activation programmes
• poverty

Role

Levana joined the Institute for Policy Research (IPR) as a PhD candidate in November 2018. She is attached to the ESRC-funded project, ‘Couples balancing work, money and care: exploring the shifting landscape under Universal Credit’, and will be developing her doctoral research under the supervision of Professor Jane Millar.

Career

Levana previously worked for the research team at SafeLives, a national domestic abuse charity, where she primarily supported frontline community organisations with programme and service evaluations. After completing her MSc, Levana joined the Hadley Centre for Adoption and Foster Care Studies at the University of Bristol. She worked on several research projects, focusing on the subjective wellbeing of looked-after children, child-to-parent violence in adoptive families, and families with children on the edge of care.

Education

Levana holds a BA in History from the University of Manchester, and an MSc in Social Science Research Methods from the University of Bristol. Her masters research explored how gender is operationalised in domestic and sexual abuse surveys in the UK.