Amanda Hill-Dixon

(she/her)

Overview

Amanda is a Research Fellow at the Wales Centre for Public Policy. Her role involves developing and leading research to generate useful and impactful insights for Welsh policy makers and public service leaders. She is currently leading projects related to tackling poverty in Wales, the education response to the Coronavirus pandemic, race and ethnic inequality and the use of technology to address loneliness among older people during the pandemic. 

Amanda has a background in developing social research to improve, change or disrupt practice and policy, with a focus on strengthening communities and promoting equality. Prior to joining the Centre, Amanda was Senior Researcher at The Young Foundation where she developed and led a range of national and international social policy research projects, including:

• The design and creation of the Community Wellbeing Index with Co-op, the UK’s first measure of community wellbeing at a neighbourhood level.
• B-MINCOME: an in-depth two-year ethnographic investigation of experiences of B-MINCOME, a radical trial of guaranteed minimum income in Barcelona.
• The creation of guidance for building and strengthening healthy communities in new places as part of the NHS project Healthy New Towns.

In addition, Amanda was Academic and Research Lead at Project Oracle (now Centre for Youth Impact) and a Consultant at Cordis Bright. In these roles she worked on a wide range of mixed methods research and evaluation projects related to education, children and youth services, social care, and tackling violence against women and girls, including for the Department for Education, the Big Lottery Fund, Refuge, Women’s Aid and the Welsh Government.

Amanda has an MSc in Social Policy Research from the London School of Economics, a PGCE in secondary (history) education from University College London Institute of Education, and a BA (Hons) in History from the University of Cambridge.