News and Blog

IMAJINE Scenarios presented to EU Cohesion Policy Conference

Professor Michael Woods presented findings from the CWPS-WISERD-led Horizon 2020 project IMAJINE to the Third Joint EU Cohesion Policy Conference in Zagreb in November. Jointly organized by the European Commission Directorate-General for Regional and Urban Policy (DG-Regio), the Regional Studies Association and the Croatian Government, the conference brought together 150 academics, EU policymakers and member…

Counteracting the rise of the robots: exploring the prospects for marginalised young men in ex-industrial areas

  The future of work In recent years, media headlines such as: ‘Robots are coming for your job: and faster than you think’ have become increasingly prominent. Such media coverage derives from research on the future of work and the impact of new technologies and automation, which sets out competing arguments that are widely contested….

New WISERD report on North Wales Growth Deal

As part of WISERD’s ESRC-funded Civil Society Centre research programme, a team of WISERD researchers have published a new report on the process of developing and implementing the North Wales Growth Deal (NWGD), based on observations from a series of interviews with stakeholders between July-December 2021. Fifteen remote interviews were conducted by three researchers: Dr…

Launch Conference for Foundational Alliance Wales

With over 40 delegates and more presenters and delegates joining online, the hybrid conference launched the Foundational Alliance project of building alliances for change and foundational renewal in Wales. A combination of presentations and workshop discussions highlighted foundational objectives and ways of working which can sustain household liveability and responsible providers within planetary limits.

Welsh teachers lose hundreds of working hours acting as translators

Hundreds of working hours are wasted due to schoolteachers lacking a centrally shared language resource. Despite recent developments in use of the virtual learning platforms like Hwb (available to Welsh schools for free since 2012), teachers lacking Welsh-language resources for their classroom are unable to access translations of other resources. Under the current system, if…

New paper on ‘Refugees, race and the limits to rural cosmopolitanism’ in Wales and Ireland

CWPS-WISERD Co-Director Professor Michael Woods has published an open access paper in the Journal of Rural Studies which examines the settlement of refugees and asylum seekers in three small towns in Wales and Ireland, including Aberystwyth and Newtown. The paper builds on an earlier article that introduced the idea of ‘precarious rural cosmopolitanism’, arguing that…

WISERD welcomes international visiting scholar, Professor Charles Sabel

In early November 2022, we were delighted to welcome Professor Charles Sabel from Columbia Law School as WISERD international visiting scholar. Professor Sabel joined us in sparcIspark for a week of events and discussions about his work on experimental governance. The visit kicked off with an intensive workshop addressing “Industrial Policy for Climate Change and…

New paper highlights the impact of industrial transformation in rural areas

A new paper in the Journal of Rural Studies reports on research from the ERC Global-Rural project led by CWPS-WISERD to examine the industrial transformation of a village in eastern China in the context of globalization. Co-authored by CWPS-WISERD Co-Director Professor Michael Woods with former CWPS-WISERD post-doc Dr Francesa Fois (now at Salford University), Professor…

20th Anniversary of the ESRC Festival of Social Science

To celebrate 20 years of the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) Festival of Social Science, WISERD hosted two events at this year’s Festival, which aimed to highlight one of our ongoing education research projects and a useful data tool that helps us to better understand our towns and local areas. We began with a…