HOST Policy Research: The Team
David Parsons
Professor David J Parsons joined HOST in 1992 as Associate Director, becoming Director of Development in 1994 and in 2010 he became an Executive Associate. He has previously held advisory posts with the Department for Education and Skills, European Commission (DG V), the Economic and Social Research Council, among others and is currently Visiting Professor in Cultural and Education Studies at Leeds Metropolitan University.
Following David’s first degree at the University of London (1970-73) and a PhD at the University of Nottingham (1973-76), he moved into a career in policy research and public agency consultancy on skills and labour market issues. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society for his early work on occupational and skills profiling and local economic development. Since 1976, he has worked extensively on employment development and Vocational Education and Training issues in university research, and as Fellow at the Institute of Employment Studies. In 1986, he was appointed Manpower Adviser to the National Economic Development Office in the UK, where he advised NEDO and its Sector Groups on employment, training and workforce diversity policy issues, later joining the Institute of Personnel and Development as its first Research Director in 1990.
A particular specialism of David’s has been UK skills research and most recently the reform and modernisation of post-compulsory education to meet changing economic and technological needs. While much of his work has been in the UK, and in particular, in contributing policy research to governmental reviews such as the National Skills Task Force and Leitch review, and leading a series of evaluations of reform programmes in FE and HE. He has also contributed key studies to the post-Lisbon agenda on VET modernisation in Europe, and also on the effectiveness of active labour market policies in different employment and institutional settings.
David is an acknowledged authority on evaluation methodology development and the use within this of systematic impact assessment methods. He has worked in this capacity as an adviser on a range of employment policy initiatives for DIUS/DfES, BIS/BERR/DTI, Office of Manpower Economics and to non-departmental agencies including the LSC, LSIS/QIA and TDA. In this role, he has been an independent member of government advisory bodies and has sat on both the Employment in Britain study group and previously The Carnegie Inquiry into the Third Age. He regularly contributes to national and international conferences on human resource and labour market issues, and has published widely (including eight books on employment and enterprise studies and one on employment survey methodology).
Outside of HOST, David indulges his passions for fireside literature and fine wines, and more actively for walking, fishing, and when time and temperature permit also scuba-diving.
› John Barry › Alan Bloomfield › Stefan Burkey › Simon Bysshe › Frances Chinemana › Peter Duschinsky › Peter Foster › Claire Harris › Inge Hill › Jane Holland › Jacqueline Hughes › Wayne Isaac › Alyson Jenkins › Alison Kennedy › Susan Lanz › Sue Ottley › David Parsons › Valerie Rowe › Jo Verrill › Jenny Wall › Kenneth Walsh › Dick Willis