Share
Research Associate, Department of Sociology
Dr Coutts is a Research Associate in the Department of Sociology, Senior Research Fellow at Magdalene College and an Affiliated Researcher at the new Bennett Institute for Public Policy.
Adam's current research (supported by the Health Foundation, 2017-2020) is a Randomised Control Trial evaluation to test how an Active Labour Market Programme (ALMP) called Group Work / JOBS II can be used to protect the mental health and wellbeing of the unemployed as well as return people to work. In this project, he uses ethnographic and quantitative methods to explore how health and wellbeing changes with participation in ALMPs and what are the active elements responsible for these changes; and examine how a large scale social policy intervention and experimental evaluation is implemented by government and what are the key challenges. In order to conduct the research, Adam is undertaking a research placement with the newly established Work and Health Unit, at the Department for Work and Pensions, UK Government.
Adam collaborates with academics and policy-makers from Syria, Lebanon and Jordan to examine the political economy of health in the Arab region, the Syrian refugee health crisis and humanitarian response. He currently leads the political economy of health in conflict component of a new four year Global Challenges Research Fund project. Overall the project is lead by Professor Richard Sullivan at Kings College, London and involves collaborations with colleagues at Imperial College, The American University of Beirut, The King Hussain Cancer Centre, and Hacettepe University.
Highlights of his work have appeared in the Lancet, New York Times, National Public Radio, Al-Jazeera and the Financial Times. Outside of academia he cofounded the Syria Public Health Network in order to address policy challenges arising in the humanitarian health response. The network provides advocacy, policy briefs and evidence reviews to donors, NGOs and UN agencies.
Adam holds a PhD from the University of Cambridge and has held post-doctoral research positions (Funded by the ESRCand Mellon Foundation) at Cambridge and the Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Oxford and Nuffield College. He is a research associated at the Centre for Business Research, an Honorary Research Fellow at ECOHOST, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicineand has held visiting research positions at the Department of Social and Behavioural Sciences, Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health and the Institute of Health Equity, University College, London.
