News and Blog

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…

Constitutionally a secular state, India is a diverse country with marked religious divides. Recent years have seen growing international and domestic concerns over multiple forms of discrimination affecting persons belonging to religious and linguistic minorities, and a growing trend of violence against members of religious minorities. There are similar worries over discrimination and oppression faced…

India’s leading human rights NGOs attended the two-day WISERD- Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi joint civil society Research Workshop held in New Delhi on August 17-18. It was held as part of the project ‘Exploring Effective Practice in Civil Society Organisations: Promotion of Human Rights, Good Governance and Social Justice in India and Bangladesh’ project…

In the 1970 General Election (the first following the reduction of the voting age to 18), 65% of eligible 18-24 year olds voted – roughly 7% lower than the turnout for the whole electorate.  By the 2017 election (despite claims of a so-called ‘youthquake’), this difference had trebled: fewer than half of eligible 18-24 year…

For the past six years WISERD Education has been following the lives of children and young people in Wales. This has involved an annual survey of over 1,000 young people each year, following them all from the beginning of secondary school in Year 7 to when they leave school (from Years 11 to 13). The…

Earlier this month WISERD colleagues from Cardiff and Bangor attended the International Society for Third Sector Research (ISTR) Conference in Amsterdam. This bi-annual gathering of academics and practitioners from over 80 countries across the world, aims to promote the study of civil society and the non-profit sector. Hosted by Vrije Universiteit (VU) Amsterdam, the conference saw…

The Sheffield Needs A Payrise (SNAP) research project follows the campaign of the same name and builds on the WISERD Spaces of New Localism Civil Society research project. It looks primarily into forms of grassroots, civil society and trade union working together to address issues of low pay and precariousness in work in Sheffield. SNAP…

In 2017-18, a record number of people (1,575 in total) in the UK donated their organs after death, resulting in more than 5,000 life-saving or life-improving transplants. These figures, released by NHS Blood and Transplant, show numbers of deceased donors continue to rise in the UK. The 2017-18 figure was an 11% increase on the…

Wales in the 1950’s might seem a strange place to start a blog about the impact of Brexit on young people and of the potential of young people to influence Brexit. However just after the Second World War was a time where fundamental questions were being asked about the nature of identity within states across…

A blog co-written by WISERD’s Dr Sioned Pearce for the National Assembly for Wales Research Service