As a member of the Centre for Research in Health and Social Care, Demi has maintained a primary interest in the effects of an ageing population on policy development and on the capacity of the health and social systems to respond to these needs. He has conducted research into the roles and responsibilities, interactions and linkages between the market, the state, the voluntary sector and informal sector in meeting the needs of older people.

He is a member of the Faculty Research Group - Ageing Futures which examines changing life course patterns have influenced health and wellbeing, retirement and pension income, family structure, and social, economic and political participation of older people in society.  He is also interested in how experiences, choices, opportunities, and constraints earlier in the life course influence quality of life and wellbeing in older age.

He is also member of the Townsend Centre for International Poverty Research and is examining the plight of poorer pensioners in the UK, Northern Ireland and Channel Isles.  As part of the PSEUK 2012 research team, Demi has lead the development of a Living Standards Index for the UK, as well as looking into changes in the prevalence and incidence of pensioner poverty and social exclusion in the UK. 

Research projects

Completed

• The distribution and dynamics of economic and social wellbeing in the UK
• Think Ahead Independent External Evaluation
• DfE Longitudinal Evaluation of the Step Up to Social Work Programme
• The first years in children’s social work: National evaluation of the Newly Qualified Social Worker and the Early Professional Development Pilot programmes
• Evaluation of early professional development pilot programme for children's social workers
• Liberty, equality, capacity: The impact of the Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards (DoLS) on human rights and social care practice
• Poverty and social exclusion in the UK
• Understanding the social impacts of UK climate change policies
• Understanding social exclusion across the life course: Working age adults without dependent children (2009)
• Fuel poverty indicator for Wales
• Trends in the receipt of formal and informal care by older people with functional dependencies living at home in Britain (2007)
• Updating the Fuel Poverty Indicator for England (2007)
• Review of the multi-dimensional measurement of social exclusion (2006)
• Analysis of Poverty and Social Exclusion Survey Northern Ireland Dataset (2003)
• Guernsey Survey of Relative Poverty (2002)