Dr
Calum
Webb
(he/him)

BA (Hons), MA, PhD, SFHEA, RSS GradStat

School of Education

Lecturer in Quantitative Social Sciences

Deputy Director of Advanced Data Analytics, White Rose Doctoral Training Partnership

Co-lead of the Research Methods and Methodological Innovation Cluster, School of Education

Head and shoulders image of Dr Calum Webb
Profile picture of Head and shoulders image of Dr Calum Webb
c.j.webb@sheffield.ac.uk
+44 114 222 7125
The Wave

Full contact details

Dr Calum Webb
School of Education
The Wave
2 Whitham Road

Sheffield

S10 2AH

Profile

Dr. Calum Webb is a quantitative social scientist who researches inequalities in children's social care and the child welfare system and is part of the Sheffield Methods Institute within the School of Education. He is interested in preventative and public health-related approaches to child protection and safeguarding, and the role that poverty, public funding of services, and other structural factors play in preventing or exacerbating the risk of child abuse and neglect. His research has been published in a number of leading journals including the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, Children and Youth Services Review, the Journal of Mixed Methods Research, the Journal of Social Policy, Child Abuse & Neglect, and the British Journal of Social Work.
Calum uses a range of advanced quantitative research methods in his work and is currently a Deputy Director of Advanced Data Analytics in the White Rose Doctoral Training Partnership, the co-lead of the Research Methods and Methodological Innovation Cluster in the School of Education, and module convenor for EDC117 Data Visualisation — Coding & Design and EDC459 Introduction to Quantitative Social Research. He is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and a Graduate Statistician of the Royal Statistical Society. He enjoys helping others learn practical data analysis skills and statistical methods in an accessible way.

Qualifications

PhD Sociology
MA Social Research
BA (Hons) Sociology
Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (SFHEA)
Royal Statistical Society Graduate Statistician (RSS GradStat)

Research interests

Calum is interested in the relationship between poverty, public service funding, social policy, community, and children's social care and protection. He previously led several quantitative research components of the Child Welfare Inequalities Project before holding a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship that explored the link between decreasing funding for family support, youth and children's services and increasing rates of children placed in care. He currently sits on the steering group of the Child Welfare Inequalities International Network and is part of the Department for Education's Children's Social Care Knowledge Exchange Group. He is formerly an editorial board member for the Journal of Social Policy and is currently an editorial board member for the journal Social Policy & Society.
He has led on or contributed to several significant public-facing outputs that aim to facilitate local authority and national governmental approaches to addressing structural determinants of child abuse and neglect. Examples include:
* The Anti-Poverty Practice Guide for Social Work (with the British Association of Social Workers)
* The Child of the North: Building a fairer future after COVID-19 Report (with the Northern Health Science Alliance)
* The Child Welfare Inequalities Project App
* The Investing in Prevention & Support Project Website and Interactive Shiny App
Calum is also interested in the application of advanced quantitative research methods in social science more widely, and regularly supervises or contributes to projects using a range of methods including structural equation modelling, multilevel modelling, quasi-experimental designs, and causal observational studies. He is particularly interested in inference in studies using administrative data and the role of Bayesian statistics.

Publications

Journal articles

  • Moxon E, Carlile O, Lockwood BA, Webb C & Hughes N (2026) . Children and Youth Services Review, 187.
  • Leyland A, Webb C, Hughes N & Bennett M (2026) . Child Abuse and Neglect, 174, 107943-107943.
  • Leyland A, Webb CJR & Hughes N (2026) . Children and Youth Services Review, 184.
  • Leyland A, Webb CJR, Hughes N & Bennett M (2025) . Child Abuse & Neglect, 170.
  • Leyland A, Hughes N, Webb C & Bennett M (2025) . International Journal for Population Data Science, 10(4).
  • Leyland A, Webb CJR, Bennett MR & Hughes N (2025) . Children and Youth Services Review, 172(17 March 2025).
  • Goldacre A, Jones E, Martin E, Clements K, Webb C & Hood R (2025) . Children and Youth Services Review, 169, 108113-108113.
  • Hood R, Goldacre A, Jones E, Martin E, Clements K & Webb C (2025) . The British Journal of Social Work, 55(2), 663-681.
  • Hood R, Goldacre A, Jones E, Martin E, Clements K & Webb C (2024) . The British Journal of Social Work, 54(7), 2937-2956.
  • Fitzgerald C, Webb C & McNally C (2024) . Health Promotion Practice, 25(5), 845-854.
  • Webb C & Bywaters P (2024) . Child Abuse & Neglect, 149.
  • Hood R, Goldacre A, Jones E, King A, Clements K & Webb C (2023) . The British Journal of Social Work.
  • de Saille S, Kipnis E, Potter S, Cameron D, Webb CJR, Winter P, O’Neill P, Gold R, Halliwell K, Alboul L , Bell AJ et al (2022) . Frontiers in Robotics and AI, 9.
  • Esposito T, Chabot M, Caldwell J, Webb C, Delaye A, Fluke JD, Trocmé N & Bywaters P (2022) . Children and Youth Services Review, 138.
  • Webb C, Bennett D & Bywaters P (2022) . Social Policy and Society.
  • Webb C (2022) . Societies, 12(1).
  • Jørgensen AM, Webb C, Keddell E & Ballantyne N (2022) . Nordic Social Work Research, 12(3), 379-391.
  • Webb C (2021) . Journal of Social Policy.
  • Bennett DL, Webb CJR, Mason KE, Schlüter DK, Fahy K, Alexiou A, Wickham S, Barr B & Taylor-Robinson D (2021) . Children and Youth Services Review, 131.
  • Mason W, Morris K, Featherstone B, Bunting L, Davidson G, McCartan C, Bywaters P & Webb C (2021) . The British Journal of Social Work, 51(7), 2645-2664.
  • Scourfield J, Webb CJR, Elliott M, Staniland L & Bywaters P (2021) . Child Abuse Review, 30(4), 306-317.
  • Hood R, Goldacre A, Webb C, Bywaters P, Gorin S & Clements K (2021) . The British Journal of Social Work, 51(6), 1942-1962.
  • Webb C, Bywaters P, Elliott M & Scourfield J (2021) . Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, 75(3), 251-257.
  • Webb C, Bywaters P, Scourfield J, Davidson G & Bunting L (2020) . Children and Youth Services Review, 117.
  • Mason W, Morris K, Webb C, Daniels B, Featherstone B, Bywaters P, Mirza N, Hooper J, Brady G, Bunting L & Scourfield J (2020) . Journal of Mixed Methods Research, 14(2), 164-183.
  • Webb C, Bywaters P, Scourfield J, McCartan C, Bunting L, Davidson G & Morris K (2020) . Children and Youth Services Review, 111.
  • Sen R & Webb C (2019) . Children and Youth Services Review, 106, ---.
  • Bywaters P, Scourfield J, Webb C, Morris KM, Featherstone B, Brady G, Jones C & Sparks T (2019) . Children and Youth Services Review, 96, 145-154.
  • Morris KM, Mason W, Bywaters P, Daniel B, Featherstone B, Mirza N, Brady G, Bunting L, Scourfield J, Hooper J & Webb C (2018) . Child and Family Social Work, 23(3), 364-372.
  • Sen RN, Morris K, Burford G, Featherstone B & Webb C (2018) . Children and Youth Services Review, 88, 441-449.
  • Webb CJR & Bywaters P (2018) . Local Government Studies, 44(3), 391-415.
  • Bywaters P, Brady G, Bunting L, Daniel B, Featherstone B, Jones C, Morris KM, Scourfield J, Sparks T & Webb C (2018) . Child & Family Social Work, 23(1), 53-61.
  • BENNETT DL, SCHLÜTER DK, MELIS G, WEBB CJ, REDDY S, BARR BEN, WICKHAM S & TAYLOR-ROBINSON D () . Journal of Social Policy, 1-21.

Conference proceedings

  • Bennett D, Webb C, Mason K, Schlüter D, Fahy K, Alexiou A, Wickham S, Barr B & Taylor-Robinson D (2021) . Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, Vol. 75 (Suppl 1) (pp A7). Virtual Conference, 15 September 2021 - 15 September 2021.

Software, code or databases

  • Webb C & Bell A .

Datasets

  • Webb C .

Presentations

  • Webb C .

Other

  • Webb C () .

Preprints

  • Evans C, Leckie G, Subramanian SV, Bell A, Merlo J, Borrell LN & Webb CJR (2024) , Center for Open Science.
Grants
Awarding bodyProject titleFunding amount
Nuffield FoundationStudying the outcomes of different types of demand for children’s social care£184,129 (Consultant)
Nuffield FoundationRethinking Domestic Abuse in Child Protection: Responding differently£429,802 (Co-I)
Administrative Data Research UKHow do differing rates and modes of child welfare service interventions impact upon educational and criminal justice outcomes of vulnerable children?£66,966 (Co-I)
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, CanadaBeyond neighbourhood socioeconomic disadvantages: Deepening our understanding of structural inequalities in disparate child protection involvement£194,633 (Collaborator)
British Academy Postdoctoral Research FellowshipInvestment in Prevention and its Systemic Effects: Modelling the causal effects of spending in children’s services with a whole systems approach. (2021)£257,578 (PI)
ESRC Impact Accelerator AccountArtificial Intelligence & Social Care: Strengthening Partnerships and Coproducing Priorities in Social Work (2020)£45,173 (PI)
Nuffield FoundationRe‐analysing the CWIP quantitative dataset using multilevel modelling (2019)£35,400 (Co-I)
Sheffield University Student’s UnionUnderstanding the needs of Chinese students on postgraduate taught programmes (2019)£1,000 (PI)
Research England Higher Education Innovation FundThe Child Welfare Inequalities Project App (CWIP App) (2019)£9,981 (PI)
Nuffield Foundation

Identifying and understanding the link between system conditions and welfare inequalities in statutory children’s social care services. (2018)


 

£263,652 (Consultant)
Nuffield FoundationIdentifying and Understanding Inequalities in Child Welfare Intervention Rates (Child Welfare Inequalities Project) (2015)£557,705 (RA)
ESRC Innovation, Impact and Knowledge ExchangeDeveloping a policy learning tool for anti‐poverty policy design and assessment.£12,722 (Co-I)
Teaching interests

Calum teaches quantitative social research methods and skills on our MA Social Research and BA Social Sciences programmes, as well as delivering quantitative research methods training for PhD students through the White Rose Doctoral Training Partnership. In 2023, he was nominated for an Education Award for Teaching Practice. He currently convenes the following modules:
* EDC117 Data Visualisation — Coding & Design
* EDC459 Introduction to Quantitative Research Methods
At doctoral level, Calum has taught short courses on Structural Equation Modelling; Advanced Data Tidying in R using the tidyverse; 'finding your programming language' with examples in R, Julia, and Python; Introduction to Data Analysis using R; and Simulation Studies for Model Evaluation (with Prof. Andy Bell).
Calum is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and has previously contributed to the development of national higher education standards such as the 2026 QAA Subject Benchmark Statement for Social Policy.

Professional activities and memberships
  • Member of the Social Policy Association
  • Fellow & Graduate Statistician of the Royal Statistical Society
  • Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy