News and Blog

A new analysis has highlighted the extent to which young people in Wales experience severe disadvantage during the transition into adulthood. Researchers from the ADR Wales Housing & Homelessness research team followed roughly 61,000 young people from their 16th birthdays for up to nine years, examining records for mental ill-health, drug misuse, alcohol misuse and youth homelessness. The study…

A BBC News article published this week showcases how data collected through Llamau’s Upstream Cymru screening surveys has helped identify young people at risk of experiencing homelessness and connect them with early support, changing lives and preventing crises before they happen. Supporting this work has been a longstanding partnership between Llamau and ADR Wales. Llamau…

On Wednesday 8 and Thursday 9 July, the 16th WISERD Annual Conference took place at Cardiff University’s Bute Building, welcoming over 170 delegates. The agenda comprised over 60 paper presentations, seven flashtalks, three plenary sessions, several panels, workshops and symposia, and an exclusive film showing, all under the theme of ‘In Pursuit of Sustainable Futures’….

The WISERD Annual Conference 2026 took place at Cardiff University on Wednesday 8 and Thursday 9 July 2026. Scroll through the gallery below to see some of our favourite moments from the event.                                            …

Groundbreaking research pioneered in Wales is transforming how childcare provision is understood and delivered across England, as new evidence shows the UK’s most detailed analysis of ‘childcare deserts’ and ‘childcare oases’ is built on methods developed by Wales Institute of Social and Economic Research and Data (WISERD) academics. The researchers at WISERD – a collaboration…

Horse Race Politics is a free, gamified website that allows users to predict various political outcomes, notably that of the 2026 Welsh Senedd election. It is the third iteration of a platform I built for my MSc and PhD research. This time, it has been designed and built in collaboration with our partners, Focus Games,…

Randomised control trials (RCTs) are often described as the ‘gold standard’ for testing whether new treatments or interventions work. In this blog, Dr Ian Thomas who leads the ADR Wales Housing and Homelessness thematic area, looks at the use of linked administrative data as part of RCTs. Drawing on a pilot trial of an intervention for…

WISERD is playing a central role in a project to map and support the green transition on the Isle of Anglesey and beyond. The Public Map Platform (PMP) is entering a second phase after securing a £3.12m Green Transition Ecosystems grant from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). This follows an initial £4.63m awarded…

The Analytical Services division of the Department for the Economy at the Northern Ireland Government will host a launch event for the Northern Ireland findings of the Skills and Employment Survey (SES). Professor Alan Felstead and Rhys Davies from the SES research team will present the results from their forthcoming report, Going Beyond Pay: Job Quality in…

It began with a few small projects—data cleaning, pilot surveys, and summer internships. But today, those pieces form part of a much bigger picture: a growing partnership and a movement with a royal seal of approval that is reshaping how we understand and prevent youth homelessness across the UK. For several years, Professor Pete Mackie…