News and Blog

People working and volunteering in Welsh towns and communities will benefit from a new resource to help them identify opportunities in their areas.  Understanding Welsh Places is a bilingual website built by a team of researchers at WISERD and coordinated by the Institute of Welsh Affairs. It presents information on the economy, demographic make-up and…

New ESRC grant will see first-time multi-disciplinary research conducted on consequences of school exclusions across the UK, led by the Department of Education at the University of Oxford. Professors Sally Power and Chris Taylor are part of a team of researchers operating across Oxford, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Belfast, Reading and the London School of Economics (LSE)…

Today, WISERD launches a new interactive service allowing users to access data on union membership for over 400 unitary authority and local authority districts of Great Britain. UnionMaps allows users to produce area reports of union membership for a particular location or explore how different measures of union membership vary across Great Britain. Since its…

On Monday 9th September, a team of WISERD researchers from Cardiff University, Helen Blakely, Wil Chivers, Rhys Davies, Steve Davies and Katy Huxley, will share the latest findings from our research on trade union membership in the UK, to the TUC Congress. The 151st annual congress event will take place at the Brighton Centre and attract hundreds of delegates representing every…

On the 3rd and 4th July, WISERD held its 10th Annual Conference in the Medrus Conference Centre at Aberystwyth University. This year’s theme was Civil Society and Participation, and as Wales’ largest social science conference, the event attracted over 100 delegates from across academic, policy, public, private, and third sectors. The conference began with two…

In two weeks’ time, WISERD will be holding its Annual Conference in the Medrus Conference Centre at Aberystwyth University. This year’s theme is Civil Society and Participation. Delegates will have the opportunity to discuss cutting-edge, inter-disciplinary research from Wales and beyond, focusing on approaches to civil society and participation that have been adopted in a…

From sharing our latest research findings and hosting expert panel discussions, to providing practical workshops and networking opportunities, WISERD ran four events as part of this year’s Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) Festival of Social Sciences. We began the week by visiting a local secondary school and sharing some of the latest findings from…

This year WISERD celebrates a decade of influencing policy and debate. To mark this important anniversary, a variety of external stakeholders were invited to join WISERD colleagues, old and new, for WISERD at 10, at the Senedd in Cardiff Bay. The event marked the launch of Changing Wales: WISERD at 10, a new publication showcasing…

In a previous post we saw how the turnout of younger voters has fallen substantially over the past fifty years, and that the turnout gap between young people and the wider electorate has trebled since 18 year olds were first allowed to vote. There is an extensive – and sometimes heated – debate amongst academics,…

Work from WISERD’s Civil Society Research Programme features prominently at the National Council for Voluntary Organisations (NCVO) Annual Conference in London, taking place today and tomorrow September 6-7. The WISERD stand (pictured) is doing brisk business with high levels of interest from conference-goers.     WISERD researchers will be presenting a raft of papers. For…