News and Blog

Horserace Politics (HRP) offers a pioneering platform that enables users to predict the outcomes of political events in a competitive, gamified environment. HRP is led by WISERD academics Drs Matthew Wall and Louis Bromfield (both at Swansea University’s Department of Politics, Philosophy and International Relations) in collaboration with Focus Games Ltd. – a commercial partner…

Dr Anwen Elias, WISERD co-director based at the Centre for Welsh Politics and Society at Aberystwyth University, is lead author of the latest report by the Institute of Welsh Affairs (IWA): Fostering Democratic Innovations in Wales: Lessons From Around the World. Dr Elias will be in conversation with IWA co-director, Joe Rossiter, on Tuesday 4…

The latest book in WISERD’s Civil Society and Social Change series with Policy Press has been published today, entitled Commons, Citizenship and Power: Reclaiming the Margins. Since the 2010s, populism and illiberal politics have been on the rise. Demagogue leaders preach simplified rhetoric to vilify the powerless, polarising city and rural areas and sparking such…

Rob French leads the ADR Wales Education research theme. In this blog post, Rob describes how the intersection of education and child health data will be explored in a new special edition of the International Journal of Population Data Science. Linking child health and education data enables us to explore the mutual dependence of these two critical…

Jen Keating is a Research Associate from the ADR Wales Education theme and the WISERD Education Data Lab. In a new blog post, she describes two workshops she led in November for parents, carers, and educators on how they can best use national data to support children with additional learning needs (ALN) in Wales. These workshops took place at…

A Special Edition of the Mug of Research short films has been released on ‘How to achieve impact and ensure policy change’. In celebration of its publication, the full Mug of Research series has been re-released with updated edits. They are available here on the Aberystwyth University YouTube channel. Mug of Research is a video…

Despite being sizeable in many countries, the disability pay gap (DPG) has attracted limited academic and policy attention internationally, especially in comparison to other protected characteristics, such as gender. The recent draft Equality (Race and Disability) Bill announced in the 2024 King’s Speech suggests a major change in the UK in this regard, with the…

Congratulations to WISERD co-director, Dr Anwen Elias, based at Aberystwyth University, who has been appointed by the Deputy First Minister and Cabinet Secretary for Climate Change and Rural Affairs, Huw Irranca-Davies, as chair of a new Innovating Democracy Advisory Group. The Innovating Democracy Advisory Group has been created following a recommendation in the Independent Commission…

Trade unions across the globe face a range of disruptions that are destabilising traditional structures, practices and strategies. A new book, Experimenting for Union Renewal, which includes a chapter by WISERD researchers on the international garment sector, sets out a novel approach centred on experimentation in response to these disruptions. Drawing on in-depth analysis of…

At the recent WISERD Annual Conference, I gave a seminar with partners from civil society on school exclusion in Wales. The seminar explored the role of civil society in school exclusion and how families experience it. Below, I have included a summary of each presentation and a key takeaway for improving policy or practice. Excluded…