Government Social Research
Katherine Hudson
I am a Senior Research Officer in the Social Justice (Equalities) research team, and work closely with policy colleagues in the Scottish Executive's Equality Unit. My primary areas of work concern gender and mainstreaming equality - I promote the mainstreaming of equality issues into research and policy work.
Recently I've been working mainly on the development of a website ( Mainstreaming equality website ) that helps researchers and policy makers access information about equality issues and how they relate to different policy areas. There is plenty of variety, as I've also been involved in research into access to services for British Sign Language users and other work looking at equality training.
I started my research career in local government carrying out evaluation work and monitoring customer satisfaction with services. I was keen to do more policy-oriented research and so I joined the Scottish Executive as a Research Officer. My first post was managing the Scottish Household Survey - the largest continuous household survey in Scotland. It was something of a baptism of fire, as the specification for the survey went out to tender just a month after I arrived, and I was responsible for tendering and managing the contract, monitoring performance, overseeing publications and promoting use of the survey data.
Six months ago I progressed to a Senior Research Officer post - a completely different role.