News and Blog

Empty supermarket shelves have been a scary symptom of the COVID-19 crisis. From daily staples to sneaky snacks, we’re running low. Those shelves reveal something we don’t normally need to think about: here in Wales, our dinners depend on imported food, supply chains, and distribution networks. Could panic at the shops have been averted if…

  Catherine Calderwood, forced to resign as Scotland’s chief medical officer, is far from the only city dweller to have caused controversy by flouting lockdown rules to visit her second home in the countryside. Resentment over “coronavirus holidays” is rising. The Covid-19 crisis has prompted some to seek to escape the city. Green spaces are…

The team of researchers leading WISERD’s foundational economy work has contributed to a COVID-19 report, which makes a case for renewal of the foundational economy, after the immediate public health crisis is over. The crisis demonstrates the importance of the foundational economy, that part of the economy which produces essential goods and services consumed by…

I have followed WISERD’s civil society project with great interest over the years. There is much for civil society organisations to learn from and to reflect upon in Wales as elsewhere. Yet in all of WISERD’s work there was a gap – and that was on think tanks. I was therefore delighted when WISERD asked…

New research by WISERD Co-Director, Professor Paul Chaney, analyses civil society organisations’ (CSOs’)  perspectives on the implementation of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). Over the past decade, the majority of CIS countries have finally ratified the CRPD, offering new rights for the region’s…

Professor John Morgan’s 2019 book Philosophy, Dialogue, and Education: Nine modern European philosophers (with A. A. Guilherme), Routledge, London and New York, has been translated into Portuguese and published in Brazil by the UNESCO Chair of Youth, Education, and Society, the Catholic University of Brazilia, DF, 2020.

“Just think about it, next year, both the Durham Miners’ Gala and the Notting Hill Carnival will take place in seats represented by Conservative MPs” Michael Gove, December 2019. The Durham Miners’ Gala, established in 1871, is the largest annual gathering of trade unionists in the UK. Despite the last coal mine in County Durham…

Professor John Morgan was invited to a symposium on ’Twenty Years of Putin: How has Russia changed’ held at the Russian and East European Centre at St Antony’s College, University of Oxford, on 7th December 2019. The invitation symposium brought together Russian and other international experts on contemporary Russia from academia, diplomacy, and international business….

Town twinning grew after the Second World War, forging new friendships between old enemies as civil society crossed borders. Today, though, post-war memory has faded, while Brexit and Eurosceptic politics sow new divisions. Here in Wales, will town twinning stay relevant – or be relegated to the past? “I can’t see a future for twinning…

Our recent event, Growing up in Wales: school students’ perspectives and experiences, explored the latest findings to come out of the WISERD Education Multi Cohort Study (WMCS) survey data.  Over the past seven years, the WMCS has made an important contribution to understanding the lives of young people in Wales, by conducting an annual survey…