News and Blog

Refugees and asylum seekers in the UK In March this year, over 100,000 people were seeking asylum in the UK. 30% of these people were living in hotels, and all were banned from working and received £7 a day to cover basic needs. The UK has seen over 3,000 applications from unaccompanied children over the…

On the 30 June and 1 July, the 15th WISERD Annual Conference took place at Aberystwyth University, welcoming over 130 delegates. The agenda comprised 14 paper sessions, two panels, and three symposia and workshops under the theme of ‘Participation and partnership in a time of precarity and polarisation’. For the first time, this year’s agenda…

Our new research examines the contemporary human rights situation of indigenous peoples (IP) in Nepal. By way of context, Nepal has around 26.5 million IP, comprising at least 35 per cent of the total population. Alternatively known as Adivasi, some organisations claim the actual proportion would be closer to 50 per cent if some presently…

The care home sector is experiencing pressures arising from the fall-out of the COVID-19 pandemic and the impact of Brexit on staff shortages, especially impacting on the registered nursing workforce. This is compounded by longer-term financial pressures and on-going staff recruitment concerns, particularly following the latest proposed changes to immigration policy.  The introduction of a…

Research explores how communities can work together to bring about positive change. Academics will investigate how citizens, civil society organisations and policymakers are collaborating to tackle some of society’s most pressing problems. WISERD has secured £1.6m of funding from the UKRI Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) for the three-year research programme, ‘People, Places, and…

My new research explores civil society and state perspectives on the human rights status of persons with albinism (PWA), a rare genetic condition characterised by reduced or absent pigmentation (melanin) of the hair, skin, and eyes. Albinism has a worldwide incidence of one in 20,000 births. However, rates as high as one in 1,000 births…

The monograph, Cultural Cold Wars and UNESCO in the Twentieth Century, by W. John Morgan, Leverhulme Emeritus Fellow at WISERD, Cardiff University, and Professor Emeritus at the University of Nottingham, has been nominated for the 2025 Wayne S. Vucinich Book Prize in the United States. Established in 1983, the Wayne S. Vucinich Book Prize is…

Our new research examines the contemporary human rights situation of indigenous peoples in Bangladesh. The team recently undertook corpus analysis of civil society submissions to the latest Universal Periodic Review, the five yearly human rights monitoring exercise conducted by the United Nations. By way of context, Bangladesh has an estimated five million indigenous people (IP)…

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…