MPA and Policy Staff Profiles
Meet some of the teaching staff on our master's courses.
Dr Ruby Chau, Associate Professor
Dr Ruby Chau is an Associate Professor in public and social policy. She teaches on our master's courses, focusing on policy analysis, welfare policy and research methods. She led the policy teaching team to win the national Policy Press Outstanding Teaching Award in 2023.
Ruby's goal with her research is to inform policy and practice to improve people's lives and promote social development.
I am a first-generation migrant and a female social scientist with an ethnic minority background. Such life experiences have helped develop a cross-cultural and intersectional lens in the understanding of challenges faced by socially disadvantaged groups such as migrants, people with disabilities and women.
She brings her research to life in the classroom, hoping to inspire students to apply and critically evaluate the theories and methods that they learned from our programmes to their careers and to bring benefit to the people that they serve.
Ruby is active in both the academic community and the voluntary sector. She has been a Council member of the International Commission of Couple and Family Relations (ICCFR) since 2024. She is a Co-editor of Society and Social Policy since 2021 and a member of the editorial board of International Social Work and Journal of Women and Aging. Ruby also co-founded the South Asia Social Research Network in 2024 that aims to promote social inclusion and social justice through social research in the region.
Dr Martin Heneghan, Assistant Professor
Dr Martin Heneghan is an Assistant Professor in Public and Social Policy. After studying economics at undergraduate level, he progressed to secondary school teaching where he taught business studies. Martin also has experience working in finance as a management accountant. Following the 2008 global financial crisis, he realised we wanted to be part of the policy world to help find solutions to social problems.
Martin studied his master's in social policy and administration at the University of Nottingham which is when he found his passion for policy research and teaching. Following further study Martin returned to Nottingham and now researches and teaches in the School of Sociology and Social Policy.
I am interested and committed to contributing to finding solutions to many of the challenges we face as a global society. Whether this is population ageing, climate change, how to harness the benefits of artificial intelligence, tackling persistent poverty, to name some examples, all these challenges require policies to try and tackle them.
One of Martin's modules is called International Organisations and Global Governance. This module draws on the experience he gained during this PhD and analyses how international organisations seek to shape the agenda. It looks at how they set global debates in policy using their expertise and their moral authority as international actors. The module also critically analyses the power of international organisations and whether they are independent actors or simply the voice of powerful state. The overarching aim of the module is to equip students with all the necessary skills and knowledge to pursue a career in international organisations.
Our master's courses attract students from all over the world. Diverse voices from different undergraduate degrees, countries and cultures enriches the discussions in the classroom.
Everyone has a unique perspective they bring to discussions. What students all have in common is a desire to study public and social policy at a global level. Students should take advantage of the wonderful opportunities this offers to learn from each other new perspectives on a subject they're all interested in.