We are delighted to announce that the Rt Hon Alan Milburn has kindly agreed to become the project ambassador for our project ‘Newspapers, poverty and long-term change. A corpus analysis of five centuries of text’. He will provide guidance and share his expertise with members of the CASS team who are working on the project which is funded by the Newby Trust and led by Professor Tony McEnery.

Alan Milburn served as a Labour MP for Darlington between 1992 and 2010. During this period, he was Chief Secretary to the Treasury (1998-1999); Secretary of State for Health (1999-2004); and Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (2004-2005). Under the present government he has been appointed to chair the Commission on Social Mobility and Child Poverty which has a statutory duty to monitor and report on developments in both areas.

Alan Milburn’s commitment to our project has stemmed from his lifelong interest in the causes and consequences of poverty: “I am happy to support this worthwhile and fascinating project that will investigate changing attitudes to poverty throughout five hundred years of our history. By finding out how poverty is conceived, we are better equipped to eradicate it.” We wholeheartedly welcome Alan Milburn as our project ambassador and look forward to sharing our research with him as it progresses.