This book series arises from the Sustainable Care: connecting people and systems research programme delivered by a multidisciplinary partnership of 35 scholars in eight universities, funded by a UK Economic and Social Research Council Large Grant. It offers novel, internationally-informed interdisciplinary contributions based on work by linked research teams studying care systems, care work and care relationships.

The focus of the book series is timely and important. We hope it will inform and inspire scholars, policymakers, employers, practitioners and citizens interested in care. Books in the series offer new empirical, conceptual and methodological writing, in scholarly but accessible form, and aim to make an innovative and distinctive contribution to understandings of care challenges and how these can be addressed.

The books bring together data, practices, systems, structures, narratives and actions relevant to social care. Some relate specifically to the UK's unique policy, demographic, cultural and socio-economic circumstances, but all have clear global relevance. Similar concerns are salient around the world, especially in other advanced welfare states, where population ageing is profoundly changing age structures; developments in technology and healthcare mean more people who are ill or have long-term conditions need support at home; and ‘traditional’ gendered sources of daily caring labour are dwindling, as levels of female labour force participation rise, and family networks become more dispersed. The Covid-19 pandemic has amplified all these challenges.

Subject areas, disciplines and themes

The series critically engages with crucial contemporary debates about care infrastructure; divisions of caring labour and the political economy of care; care ethics, rights, recognition and values; care technologies and humantechnological interactions; and care relations in intergenerational, emotional, community and familial context. Within its overarching concept, sustainable care, its subject areas span social and welfare policy and systems; family and social gerontology; ageing and disability studies; employment and workforce organisation; diversity (including gender and ethnicity); social work and human resources; migration and mobility; and technology studies.

The new multi-disciplinary work on care we offer embraces progress in global scholarship on diversity, culture and the uses of technology, and engages with issues of inequality, political economy and the division of labour.