News and Blog

PrOPEL Hub hackathons help managers take action to improve job quality

In February 2024, WISERD co-directors, Professor Alan Felstead and Rhys Davies hosted hackathons in Sheffield and Belfast for human resource managers interested in improving job quality for their teams. Organised by the PrOPEL Hub and attended by nearly 100 managers from a range of private, public and third sector businesses, including government departments, social care…

ITV coverage of the 1984-85 miners’ strike

Following our recent event, ‘The past in the present: Reflections on coal mining and the miners’ strike 1984-85’ we were featured on a special ITV Wales programme, which aired on Monday 4 March and looked at how the events of 1984-85 continue to shape Wales’ economy, people, politics and communities. The coverage featured one of…

The Independent Commission on the Constitutional Future of Wales publish final report

On 17 January, following a two-year national conversation, the Independent Commission on the Constitutional Future of Wales published their report. The publication outlined three potential options for Wales’s constitutional future: enhanced devolution, a federal UK and an independent Wales. WISERD Co-Director, Dr Anwen Elias, is a member of the Commission and part of the Centre…

CWPS to lead major new project to support inclusive sustainable development in Rural Wales

A team led by WISERD-CWPS Co-Director Michael Woods has been awarded over £5m by UKRI to establish Cymru Wledig LPIP Rural Wales, the Rural Wales Local Policy and Innovation Partnership. The partnership includes CWPS members Lowri Cunnington Wynn and Rhys Jones as well as researchers at Aberystwyth, Bangor, Cardiff and Gloucestershire universities and non-academic partners…

Civil society perspectives on AI in the EU

As part of the WISERD study ‘New arenas for civic expansion: humans, animals, and Artificial Intelligence (AI)’ we presented new research at a WHEB event in Brussels last month, that reveals the views and concerns of civil society organisations (CSOs) in relation to Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the EU. The European Commission is legislating to…

WISERD presents civil society research to policymakers in Brussels

On 25 January, WISERD and Welsh Higher Education Brussels (WHEB) hosted a workshop for policymakers in Brussels and made a case for civil society research being put at the heart of plans for the European Union. Later this year, members of the European Council will meet to agree the Strategic Agenda for the European Union…

‘‘Nonsense on stilts”? 75 Years of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

In Anarchical Fallacies (1796), the English utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham said that the concept of natural rights was nonsense and that to claim rights not prescribed in the laws of the state was ‘nonsense on stilts.’ He argued that to confuse wishing that we possessed a right with the existence of the right itself was…

WISERD research presented at the Senedd

On 30 November, Professor Mitch Langford, a WISERD co-director based at the University of South Wales (USW), presented WISERD research from the ESRC-funded project, ‘Inequalities, civic loss and well-being’, to the Climate Change, Environment, and Infrastructure Committee at the Senedd. The Senedd’s Areas of Research Interest (ARI) event comprised a series of speed talks made…