Press Release

Policy Studies Institute Announces Partnership with University of Westminster

The Institute will retain its name and will continue to undertake policy-relevant high quality research. It will share facilities with the University, who will in future appoint the Institute’s management and trustees. Professor Geoffrey Holt will be the interim Director.

The Institute’s retiring trustees, a group of distinguished people in public life, are being invited by the University to form an advisory board so that the Institute’s research effort can continue to draw on their expertise.

Current research projects in which the Institute is involved include studies of welfare reform, welfare to work and lone parents.

Welcoming the partnership, Dr Geoffrey Copland, the University’s Vice-Chancellor, said:

‘The new partnership represents an opportunity to move forward into the next century better equipped to confront the increasingly competitive environment for research funding. PSI’s commitment to impartial, high-quality, policy-relevant research is as important now as it has been at any time over the past fifty years. I am confident that it will both enrich the University by the new links that are likely to be formed, and be enriched by the new opportunities for collaboration that will arise.’

Pamela Meadows, PSI’s retiring Director, said:

‘I wish the new partnership well. The association between PSI and the University of Westminster offers a new model of operation for a research institute. PSI is now moving into the fourth stage of its existence. It has gone from a think-tank in the 1930s, to a small independent research institute in the 1950s, to a much larger institute following the merger in 1978. The University too has undergone substantial change since it was founded a century and a half ago, most recently in its transition from being the Polytechnic of Central London to the University of Westminster. The linking of these two institutions will allow cross-fertilisation and should enable the whole to be stronger than the sum of the parts.’

Contact:        Neil Churchill on       0171 468 2236 (direct) or
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1. The Policy Studies Institute was formed in 1978 by a merger between Political and Economic Planning (founded in 1931) and the Centre for Studies in Social Policy (founded in 1972 by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation). It is a registered charity (no. 313819) whose purpose is to promote and advance the public benefit by research into political, economic and social well-being which is relevant to the development of public policy.

2. The Institute will remain in its present building at 100 Park Village East, London NW1. This is very close to the University’s main central London campuses.

3. Pamela Meadows, the Institute’s Director, was due to leave later this year at the end of her five-year contract. She has offered to step down some months early, to allow the appointment of a new Director to take the Institute forward in the new environment. She will be concentrating in the short term on writing, and will also continue her work with the Joseph Rowntree Foundation as the Programme Adviser for their Work and Opportunity research programme.