Angela Ellis Paine is a research fellow at the Third Sector Research Centre and the Health Services Management Centre at the University of Birmingham. She has a long standing interest in research on voluntary action. Angela is currently working on a number of different research studies, which focus on community responses to covid-19, change in the voluntary sector, and the role and contribution of volunteers.

Angela has been working with BVSC on a number of things, including bringing together groups of third sector leaders in Birmingham to reflect on findings emerging from a three-year study of change in the voluntary sector – called Change in the Making – and how they relate to their own experiences. Through her role as co-chair of the Voluntary Sector Studies Network, Angela has also been working with BVSC on the organisation of the annual Voluntary Sector and Volunteering Research Conference, which BVCS has been a partner for during the last two years. Some of Angela’s recent publications include:

  • A working paper (co-authored with Rob Macmillan) on third sector experiences of commissioning. A journal article will soon be published, within the Journal of Social Policy, on the same theme
  • A research briefing paper (co-authored with a number of colleagues) called ‘its time to talk: voluntary action, the state and welfare provision’ based on research from an ESRC-funded study called Discourses of Voluntary Action which has looked at how different people talk about the role and contribution of voluntary action in the 1940s and the 2010s
  • A series of co-authored reports and papers based on an NIHR-funded study of community hospitals, which included a focus on how communities support their local community hospitals, and what value the hospitals hold for their communities. This includes an article within the BMJ online, which asks whether communities (particularly volunteers within communities) can be considered a form of ‘renewable energy’ for health care services as had been suggested within the NHS Five Year Forward View