Val Gillies is a co-director of the Families & Social Capital Research Group at London South Bank University. She has researched and published the area of family, social class and at risk youth, producing various journal articles and book chapters on parenting, social policy and home school relations as well as qualitative research methods. Her book: Marginalised Mothers: Exploring Working Class Parenting (Routledge) was published in 2007. Current projects include research with secondary level pupils at risk of school exclusion, their parents and teachers, and an historical comparison of accounts of parenting from the 1960s.