Glasgow Caledonian University

United Kingdom

GLASGOW CALEDONIAN UNIVERSITY
United Kingdom

Glasgow Caledonian University has become one of the largest universities in Scotland with nearly 17,000 students. The University is made up of three academic schools in the areas of social sciences, health and science and technology. Our schools contain state-of-the-art laboratories and a number of renowned centres of excellence. GCU strong commitment to increasing access to study and lifelong learning is illustrated by the fact that the University has over 4,000 mature students and the largest number of part-time students in Scotland.

Within GCU, the project will be carried out in its leading research centre for the social sciences, the Yunus Centre for Social Business and Health.

The Centre aims to conduct collaborative research line with GCU’s mission of the ‘Common Good’, thus aiming to improve life chances of the poorest members of society transnationally; moreover it has the goal to develop an original multidisciplinary research programme around the notion of social innovation, microcredit and social business as social, economic and public health interventions;

Through being co-hosted by GCU’s two multi-disciplinary Research Institutes (of Applied Health Research and Society & Social Justice Research), the Centre is able to draw further on expertise in statistics, qualitative research and social innovation. The Centre has recently been awarded a £2 million grant from the UK’s Medical Research and Economic and Social Research Councils to study the impact of social enterprise on the health and well-being of people and communities, and is a partner in the recently funded FP7 project EFESEIIS (2013-2016) studying social innovation and social enterprises across ten European countries as well as in the Horizon 2020 projects TRANSSOL (2015-2018) focusing on paths and development of transnational forms of solidarity, and FAB-MOVE (2016-2019), focusing on civil society and social integration issues.

https://www.gcu.ac.uk/yunuscentre/


	Simone Baglioni Professor Simone Baglioni is the principal investigator of the UK team and the coordinator of SIRIUS. He holds a Chair in Political Science at Glasgow Caledonian University. He has studied political science and sociology at the University of Florence and at Sciences Po Paris, and holds a PhD in political science from the University of Geneva. Simone has extensively researched issues of employment and labour market, as well as migration and refugees. Beside Sirius, he is a principal investigator also in the EU Horizon 2020 projects TRANSSOL (“Transnational Solidarity at the Time of Crisis” www.transsol.eu) and FAB-MOVE (“For a Better Tomorrow: Social Enterprise on the Move” http://fab-move.eu). Previously, on employment and social innovation issues, he has been a principal investigator in the YOUNEX project (EU FP7) and in the EFESEIIS project (EU FP7). In the field of asylum and migration, professor Baglioni has co-led, under a UNHCR mandate, a large survey of refugees and asylum seekers across several African and European countries.

	Francesca Calò Dr. Francesca Calò is a Post Doc Researcher at the Yunus Centre for Social Business and Health and project manager of SIRIUS. She holds a PhD from Glasgow Caledonian University. Her research interests include social enterprise, impact evaluation methods (systematic review and realist evaluation), public health and non profit organisation. Prior to joining the Yunus Centre, she worked and as a research fellow in CERGAS - Bocconi University for two years. She holds an MSc from Fudan University (China) and Bocconi University (Milan) (Double Degree Program). Her PhD research focused on evidencing the health impact of community based social enterprise and her research interests include non profit organisations, social enterprises and public health.

	Olga Biosca Dr. Olga Biosca is a Senior Lecturer at the Yunus Centre for Social Business and Health, Glasgow Caledonian University. She holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Sheffield, and an MSc degree in Development Economics from the Autonomous University of Madrid, Spain. Olga is experienced in transnational comparative research dealing with economic exclusion and vulnerable groups and has extensively published in these topics. She is co-investigator in several national and international research projects: the FinWell project, funded by the Scottish Government’s Health Department, which explores the link between fair credit and health and wellbeing; the Horizon2020 project TransSol which investigates transnational solidarity at times of crisis; and the Marie Sklodowska-Curie RISE project Fab-Move (For a better tomorrow: social enterprises on the move).

	Tom Montgomery Dr. Tom Montgomery holds an MA (Hons) in Politics from the University of Glasgow, an MSc in Political Research from the University of Strathclyde and he is currently completing his PhD at the Yunus Centre for Social Business and Health, where he is examining the role of social innovation in addressing youth employment issues in Glasgow and the west of Scotland. His academic focus is on the impact of the political context on socially innovative organizations and the fragile labour markets navigated by young people which is of crucial relevance to the SIRIUS project especially as regards the research on civil society and policy barriers and enablers in work packages 3 and 4. Tom is currently working on the Horizon 2020 project, TransSOL, which is investigating European solidarity in an age of crisis with a focus upon the unemployed, refugees and the disabled. Tom has previously worked with public, private and third sector stakeholders across a number of initiatives focussed upon education, employability and health.