News and Blog

Welsh language and identity 2022’s WISERD Multi-Cohort Study of secondary school children across Wales provides valuable insight into the attitudes of pupils towards the Welsh language. As we might expect, results vary according to school medium as to whether pupils consider the Welsh language to be a part of their Welsh identity. Pupils in English-medium…

One of my first experiences with activism was within a school setting, when I was involved in the presenting of a petition against the dress code in 2019. It was circulated through social media as a Google Docs link and then forwarded to the headteacher. Unknown to me, this had become an increasingly frequent occurrence…

I am a WISERD education research associate based at Cardiff University in sbarc|spark, the world’s first social science research park. One of the aims of sbarc|spark is to encourage collaboration and creative thinking, but I never expected to join the Cardiff Christmas Dinner Crew and help plan a Christmas dinner for care experienced young people….

Disability is associated with significant labour market disadvantage internationally but despite arguments that trade unions act as a ‘sword of justice’ and protect the most disadvantaged employees, there has been relatively limited exploration of the relationship between trade unions and disability-related labour inequality. Our latest analysis provides new evidence for the UK with important insights…

We were tasked in a recent research project for the Office of Manpower Economics to provide an overview and understanding of the nature of variation in workers’ remuneration within the public sector, and how this varied by ethnicity. As our project comes to an end, we take this opportunity to reflect – what have we…

As part of a series of blog posts on WISERD’s civil society and animal welfare research, here we look at the views of campaigners with civil society organisations (CSOs) about the impact of Brexit on animal welfare. This matters, for it aligns with a key focus in the academic literature, namely, how shifting patterns and…

As part of a series of blog posts on WISERD’s civil society and animal welfare research, here we look at the views and experiences of civil society organisations (CSOs) lobbying Westminster for better animal welfare. These are emerging findings taken from a series of in-depth interviews with campaigners. This is worth studying because over recent…

As part of a series of blog posts on WISERD’s civil society and animal welfare research, here we look at the “territorialisation” of animal welfare rights and how this is being driven by civil society activism. In other words, civil society organisations (CSOs) successfully lobbying for distinctive laws and policies that convey contrasting protections in…

As part of a series of blog posts on civil society and animal welfare, here we look at emerging findings from our analysis of civil society organisations’ (CSOs’) campaigning to ban greyhound racing in Wales and Scotland. This is prompted by welfare concerns and relatedly, because races in these countries are not subject to statutory…

International, comparative and action research can be shaped through an unexpected and highly unpredictable rationale when conducting fieldwork research. In 1946, Kurt Lewin defined action research as ‘transformative research on the conditions and effects of various forms of social action that employs a spiral of steps, each consisting of a cycle of planning, action, and…