Melanie Wilkes

Associate director for work and the welfare state (maternity cover)

Mel Wilkes is associate director for work and the welfare state (maternity cover).

She leads the institute’s research across employment, childcare, education, health and social security.

Mel joins IPPR from the Work Foundation, where she led the policy and research team delivering a programme spanning insecure work, inclusive working practices, social security reforms and the impacts of the covid-19 pandemic on working life in the UK.

She holds a BA in International Relations and Languages from the University of Sussex and a Graduate Diploma in Economics from Birkbeck College, University of London.

More from this author:

  1. Melanie Wilkes on Sky News discussing employment support

  2. Towards real social security: Embedding a long-term approach to universal credit

    In this report we show how we can build a strategic, ambitious and collaborative response to improve our social security system.

  3. Working together: Towards a new public employment service

    This paper outlines a proposal to develop a new public employment service for transformative long term change