Thomas C. Stephens is a Teaching Fellow at the LSE School of Public Policy. He has taught on core Masters’ in Public Policy courses on ‘Public Management’ (AT, PP403) and ‘Public Policy Applications’ (WT, PP405). He is also the academic supervisor to MPP group projects, particularly focussing on topics related to job quality, informality and emerging technologies – working alongside external organisations in the public, private and third sectors.

Thomas' academic research focusses on the measurement and conceptualisation of workers’ wellbeing. He has published both philosophical and empirical papers and holds a PhD in Social Policy from the LSE for a thesis on work, employment and the Capability Approach. He is especially interested in how theories of wellbeing can be applied to the way we measure peoples' quality of life - with a particular focus on the labour market experience of informal and insecure workers; the choices workers have over alternative work opportunities; the way paid work interacts with workers' wider personal, household and family commitments; and the implications of new technologies for the future of work. 

Before becoming an academic he had a decade-long career in politics, policymaking and public affairs. He worked in Parliament on the successful campaign to achieve an inquiry into the contaminated blood scandal in the UK; has worked in private sector consultancy on health campaigns; and also had a brief stint in local government as a Cabinet Member for Education, Employment and Skills in a London borough. Outside of LSE, he is an Associate Fellow of the New Economics Foundation think tank, where he does mainly quantitative research on early childhood education and care and 'good work.' He is experienced in using large-scale datasets such as Understanding Society, the Labour Force Survey and the Family Resources Survey.