Rate My Professor Morag Treanor

Professor Morag Treanor holds the position of Professor of Social Policy and Inequality in the Urban Studies and Social Policy division within the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Glasgow. Her research specializes in poverty and socioeconomic inequalities, with a particular emphasis on children, young people, and families. She utilizes longitudinal qualitative and quantitative methods, including birth cohort survey data such as the Growing Up in Scotland study and administrative data, to investigate the causes, consequences, and mitigation of child poverty. Treanor is affiliated with the research groups Social and Urban Policy and Just Cities and Societies. She serves as Co-Director of the Scottish Centre for Administrative Data Research (SCADR), leading its Children's Lives and Outcomes research programme, and as Research and Knowledge Exchange Director for the Division of Urban Studies and Social Policy. From 2019 to 2023, she was Deputy Chair of the Scottish Government's statutory Poverty and Inequality Commission, and from 2021 to 2024, she was a member of The Promise Oversight Board. She also sits on the Child Poverty Action Group’s Advisory Board.

In 2025, Professor Treanor was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences. Her influential publications include the monograph Child Poverty: Aspiring to Survive (Policy Press, 2020), which draws on longitudinal data to detail children's experiences in persistent poverty. Other key works encompass The indivisibility of parental and child mental health and why poverty matters (Journal of Adolescent Health, 2023), Poverty, parental work intensity and child emotional and conduct problems (Social Science and Medicine, 2022), and Qualitative longitudinal research: from monochrome to technicolour (Social Policy and Society, 2021). She has authored reports such as Destitution in the UK 2023 (Joseph Rowntree Foundation, 2023), Households with a Disability and Lone Parent Families and the impact of Public Debt and Arrears (Aberlour, 2025), and Understanding Exclusions in Scottish Secondary Schools (ADR UK, 2024). Treanor's research informs policy through keynote presentations, including on child poverty and public debt crises, and collaborations with public and voluntary sector organizations, demonstrating substantial impact on understanding the intersections of poverty, mental health, educational exclusions, absences, and public debt.