Alex Fenton

Alex Fenton
Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin | HU Berlin · Department of Social Sciences

Dr. des.

About

23
Publications
5,999
Reads
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250
Citations
Introduction
I'm a sociologist working at the Humboldt University and the German Centre for Science and Higher Education Research (DZHW) in Berlin. My research looks at the regulatory and political uses of scientific knowledge. A particular interest is the production and application of statistics, indicators and other quantitative forms of knowledge by the state. I recently finished my PhD on the history of poverty statistics in Britain and Germany. I work with qualitative and historical well as quantitative (e.g. bibliometric) methods. My current projects are in the research group "reflexive metrics" and on the use of scientific literature in standardisation.
Additional affiliations
March 2018 - present
Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
Position
  • Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter
Description
  • Postdoctorate in the research project "Reflexive Metrics"
September 2017 - present
Deutsches Zentrum für Hochschul- und Wissenschaftsforschung GmbH
Position
  • Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter
May 2006 - September 2011
University of Cambridge
Position
  • Research Associate

Publications

Publications (23)
Article
In the past decade, England has not experienced the radical neglect and demolition of public housing that We Call These Projects Home describes happening in the United States. The English social housing sector has declined in size, primarily by sales to sitting tenants, but it remains a significant part of the housing system. Nonetheless, in London...
Article
History of the British Census - Brückweh Kerstin , Menschen zählen. Wissensproduktion durch britische Volkszählungen und Umfragen vom 19. Jahrhundert bis ins digitale Zeitalter [Britain Counts: Knowledge Production in Censuses and Survey Research from the Nineteenth Century to the Digital Age], (Berlin, De Gruyter, 2015) - Volume 57 Issue 3 - Alex...
Conference Paper
In this paper we present initial results from an analysis of the references contained in the text of current ISO standards. By parsing these references and linking them, where possible, to the Web of Science dataset, we are able to characterise the knowledge base of these international standards. As a whole, only a quarter of ISO standards include...
Article
Full-text available
This paper introduces the concept of standard-relevant publications, complementary to standard-essential patents and framed by the concept of knowledge utilization. By analyzing the reference lists of the around 20,000 standards released by ISO, authors of scientific papers cited in standards who are working at German institutions were identified....
Article
Full-text available
Science is increasingly expected to help in solving complex societal problems in collaboration with societal stakeholders. However, it is often unclear under what conditions this can happen, i.e., what kind of challenges occur when science interacts with society and what kind of quality expectations prevail. This is particularly pertinent for Socia...
Article
Full-text available
This paper addresses the problem of measuring neighbourhood characteristics and change when working with individual level datasets to understand the effects of residential mobility. Currently available measures in Britain are in various respects unsuitable for this purpose. The paper explores a new indicator of small area poverty: the Unadjusted Me...
Article
Administrative data on means-tested benefits have come to be widely used as proxy measures of local poverty rates in the UK. Two such uses are described: allocating funding to local government, and constructing neighbourhood deprivation indices. The paper argues that such uses risk errors of both measurement and interpretation. Income poverty is co...
Article
Among all departments, DCLG has had one of the largest (probably the largest) cuts to its budget – 7.8% in the 2010 Budget, with further large yearly reductions to 2015. Under the doctrine of 'localism', much of its core policy and analysis work in housing, planning and regeneration has been devolved to local authorities. A number of its non-Whiteh...
Chapter
This chapter examines the use of modelling techniques to explain and predict which kinds of households are most likely to purchase intermediate or low-cost home ownership (LCHO) housing. These techniques are adapted from a well-established literature on tenure-choice modelling, in which individuals’ housing consumption is analysed using statistical...
Article
Full-text available
This working paper analyses in detail how the government's Housing Benefit reforms will affect where in London low-income private tenants will be able to find affordable housing. We show that almost all of inner London will be largely unaffordable by 2016, and that HB claimants are likely to become increasingly concentrated in disadvantaged neighbo...
Article
This working paper presents a detailed analysis of the effects of proposed changes to LHA on private tenants. It estimates numbers who will be moved into income poverty and numbers moved into severe housing difficulty. It also looks at the longer-term effects of the measures on poorer private tenants.
Article
This report, by a consortium of researchers, is the final output from a three year evaluation evaluation of the Mixed Communities Initiative demonstration projects. It covers the period August 2006 to July 2009.
Article
The Mixed Communities Initiative (MCI) was announced in January 2005, as a new and more comprehensive approach to tackling area disadvantage, bringing together housing and neighbourhood renewal strategies to reduce concentrations of deprivation, stimulate economic development and improve public services. This study sets out the baseline position a...
Article
Full-text available
This important report presents a challenging mix of debate and findings about how mixed income new communities (MINCs) are working for families. This has a number of implications for Government, local authorities and RSLs, housebuilders and the providers of local public services.
Article
Full-text available
Falling poverty rates could indicate gentrification, or they could mean that London is now a more fair, socially mixed and cohesive city. Alex Fenton looks at what happened to poor neighbourhoods under New Labour in the 2000s, and argues that shifting rates in poverty fail to tell the whole story.

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