Special Event Announcement

Professor Robert Putnam will make a presentation on the
topic ‘Social Capital: Some Challenges for Policy Makers
and Practitioners’ next April to a special event jointly
organised by the Social Policy Association and the
Voluntary Sector Studies Network.

Robert D. Putnam is the Peter and Isabel Malkin Professor
of Public Policy at Harvard University, where he teaches
American politics, international relations, comparative
politics, and public policy.  He has authored or co-authored
eleven books and more than thirty scholarly works, including
Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy
(1993); Double-Edged Diplomacy: International Bargaining
and Domestic Politics (1993); Bureaucrats and Politicians
in Western Democracies (1981); and Comparative Study of
Political Elites (1976).  More recently, he has published the
best-selling Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of
American Community (2000), along with two collective
volumes, Disaffected Democracies: What’s Troubling the
Trilateral Countries? (2000) and Democracies in Flux: The
Evolution of Social Capital in Contemporary Society.  He is
completing a study of promising new forms of social
connectedness in communities across America and
beginning research on the challenges of building community
in an increasingly diverse society.  Putnam is a member of
the US National Academy of Sciences, a Fellow of the
British Academy, and a Fellow of the American Academy of
Arts and Sciences.  He has been consulted by the Clinton
and Bush White Houses, the Blair Government in Britain,
and national leaders in half a dozen other countries.

Professor Putnam has kindly agreed to address our joint
event during his current sabbatical in the United Kingdom.
The meeting will take place on Monday 28th April 2003 from
5.00pm at Aston Business School, Aston University,
Birmingham where the institutional host will be Professor
Margaret Harris.  The meeting will finish by 7.45pm.

There will be no charge for attending but places will be
limited and entrance will be by ticket only.  People who were
members of the Voluntary Sector Studies Network and/or
the Social Policy Association at 31 December 2002 are now
invited to register their interest in attending the event.
Those who do so before 28 February 2003 will be given
priority in allocation of tickets (‘first come, first served’)
should the event be over-subscribed.

To register your interest in attending,  please send an e-mail
message to Jo Cribb at Aston Business School
([log in to unmask]).  Please confirm your membership of
the VSSN and/or the SPA at 31 December 2002 and give
your full contact details (regular mail address, telephone
and e-mail).



Pete Alcock
Professor of Social Policy and Administration
Head of Department
Social Policy and Social Work
University of Birmingham
Edgbaston
Birmingham
B15 2TT
England

Phone: (0)121 414 5713
Email: [log in to unmask]