There were four research officers who formed, along with Peter Townsend and Brian Abel-Smith, the core of the initial research team: Hilary Land (at the LSE), Denis Marsden, John Veit-Wilson and Adrian Sinfield (at the University of Essex). These research officers conducted the pilot studies and were involved in the planning of the main survey. Below you will find interviews with Hilary Land, John Veit-Wilson and Adrian Sinfield. Dennis Marsden died in 2009 after a long academic career, in the course of which he undertook a number of major and pioneering qualitative studies on education and the working-class, lone mothers, unemployment, and on couples and intimacy.
Hilary Land worked on the pilot study of large families and then on the survey development, including working on the sampling design. After working on the Poverty in the UK research, she continued her interest in family policies, from a comparative and historical perspective, and in feminist theories. She retired from the School for Policy Studies in Bristol in 2002 is now Emeritus Professor of Family Policy and Child Welfare. Her interview provides an authorative overview of the Poverty in the UK research study. It is in six parts: