Scholar - Women Also Know History

Participant Info

Keywords: Social Security, 20th century, Social Policy, Gender History, Socio-legal history, Welfare state history

About Me: I am a socio-legal researcher and am interested in the ways in which social welfare law interacts with people’s understandings and experiences of their rights. I have particular interests in how social welfare laws and policies affect people in relation to gender, disability, age and other inequalities. I have particular expertise in social security law and in the real world of social care.

My most recent research used archive materials to look at decision making on disability benefits over the last hundred years. This research was funded through a Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellowship and has led to a research monograph ‘Gender, Work and Social Control: a century of disability benefits’ and several journal articles. This book won the prestigious Social Policy Association Richard Titmuss Book Award for 2020.

My research is mainly qualitative and I have used a variety of methods including interviews, focus groups and archives. I have expertise in using archives for social science research and in analysing qualitative data of all kinds.

Recent Publications: Gulland, J. (2019) Gender, work and social control: a century of disability benefits Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan

Gulland, J. (2019) ‘Conditionality and Social Security: Lessons from the Household Duties Test’. Journal of Social Security Law 26 (2): 60–76.
Gulland, J., (2017) Working while incapable to work? Changing concepts of permitted work in the UK disability benefit system. Disability Studies Quarterly 37 (4).
Gulland, J., (2017). All under one umbrella? The Family Guide to National Insurance 1948. Northern Ireland Legal Quarterly 68, 259–270.
Gulland, J. (2013), ‘Extraordinary Housework: women and claims for sickness benefit in the early 20th century’, Women’s History Magazine, 71, Spring 2013, pp23-30.
Gulland, J. (2012), ‘“Fitting themselves to become wage-earners”: Conditionality and incapacity for work in the early 20th century’, Journal of Social Security Law, 19 (2), pp51-70.