Publications

Are young people blindly self-interested? How does university shape students’ political participation? Can busy parents and grandparents find time to volunteer? Challenging conventional thinking, leading academics explore how individuals’ relationships with civil society change over time as different lifecourse events and stages trigger and hinder civic engagement. Drawing on personal narratives, longitudinal cohort studies and…

Journal of Rural Studies 76 pp 184-192 The figure of the older volunteer involved with the civil society of rural communities is written onto by the dual demands to age well and productively; to benefit themselves but also to be a good citizen and to contribute to their communities and to wider society. Considering this popular…

This paper addresses the emergence of microvolunteering as a conceptual and practical phenomenon, as well as one which policy makers must engage with in a careful and critical fashion. Taking a lead from Smith et al. [2010. “Enlivened Geographies of Volunteering: Situated, Embodied and Emotional Practices of Voluntary Action.” Scottish Geographical Journal 126: 258–274] who specify…

This article applies an assemblage reading to the contemporary global woollen industry to demonstrate how assemblage thinking has value as a methodology for generating insights into the local impact of global economic restructuring; bridging concerns with the relationality of rural places and translocal production networks. Putting assemblage into research practice, we trace the interactions and…

This article applies an assemblage reading to the contemporary global woollen industry to demonstrate how assemblage thinking has value as a methodology for generating insights into the local impact of global economic restructuring; bridging concerns with the relationality of rural places and translocal production networks. Putting assemblage into research practice, we trace the interactions and…

This chapter concerns itself with interrogating the multiple, sometimes contested, ways of knowing, narrating and locating contemporary mid Wales as a political-economic context, and its contingent social relations. This analysis proceeds through the specific spatial lens of what we term the Central and west Coast Locality (CWCL); an area arcing across central Wales and the…

The important role which older people play in rural community development through their various activities has become a substantive area of interest across social science disciplines, including gerontology, sociology, psychology and human geography. Reflecting the demographic shift of an ageing countryside within many parts of the global north, the future of rural social policy initiatives…

This paper considers how shifts within the social sciences towards conceptualising spatiality in relational terms have unfolded in rural studies in particular ways over the past decade or so. A period in which networks, connections, flows and mobility have all established themselves as compelling conceptual frames for research, the rural has increasingly been recast in…

Conspiracy narratives and ways of knowing are a highly visible, accessible and increasingly commonplace part of contemporary global life, permeating across spheres of politics, science and popular culture. Catalyzed by rapid developments in networked media and a political climate of enhanced government secrecy following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, thinking conspiratorially about power forms part of…