News and Blog

Government consultation cites WISERD homeworking report

The WISERD report on Homeworking in the UK: Before and During the 2020 Lockdown has been cited in a government consultation on Making flexible working the default. The open consultation seeks views from individuals and businesses on proposals to reform flexible working regulations (The Flexible Working Regulations 2014). The report, by Alan Felstead of Cardiff…

Social Anthropologies of the Welsh: Past and Present

  A new collection of essays entitled Social Anthropologies of the Welsh: Past and Present, edited by Professor W. John Morgan and Dr Fiona Bowie will be published this month in the Royal Anthropological Institute’s Country Series. The book has its origins in a joint colloquium of the Royal Anthropological Institute, WISERD, the Learned Society…

Achieving impact beyond research

On 22nd September, WISERD held the first of three workshops organised by the new WISERD Migration Research Wales Network. ‘Achieving Impact Beyond Research’ aimed to provide academics at all stages of their careers with the tools and recommended routes to transfer their expertise and knowledge from academia and a solely academic audience to the policy…

Play 2021: The right to play and the child-friendly city

I recently attended Play 2021 (a new conference hosted by community interest company Playful Planet) which brought together researchers, policymakers and practitioners interested in ‘child-friendly’ urban design and children’s play. One of our interests as part of our WISERD research project has been the concept of the ‘child-friendly city’ and what an enabling environment for the…

Leverage campaigns and how they work

In this third and final part of my blog series exploring the recent election of new Unite leader, Sharon Graham, I’ll be focusing on leverage campaigns and how they work. As a highly contentious topic, they form a key part of Graham’s strategy for organising Unite into a union of “strike ready workplaces”, but are…

So who is Sharon Graham and what does she stand for?

In the second part of this three-post blog series exploring the recent election of new Unite leader, Sharon Graham, I’ll explain a bit more about her priorities and approach. I’ll focus more on one particular aspect of her strategy in the final part of the series: Leverage campaigns and how they work. I interviewed her…

Unite’s shock election result

With both the TUC and Labour holding annual conferences one after the other, much attention was on the unions’ newest leader, Sharon Graham. Her election as general secretary of the UK and Ireland’s most important union, Unite, came as a shock to most of the commentariat. In this, the first part of a three-post blog…

Data from the EU Settlement Scheme Demonstrates the Challenge of Estimating the Population of EU Migrants Living in Wales

In this blog, Stephen Drinkwater, Professor of Economics at the Business School in the University of Roehampton and academic lead for the EU Settlement Scheme Data Linkage Project, looks at the latest data available on applications made to the Home Office for EU Settled Status and how this data is helping to shape the project…

Foundational renewal: Transforming reliance systems in the wake of COVID-19

WISERD’s third foundational economy conference, held online earlier this month, brought together researchers and practitioners from across the UK and beyond, to discuss how the foundational economy can be rebuilt, enhanced and sustained in response to new and old challenges magnified by the pandemic. Over three days, an expert panel of speakers and discussants from…

Do young people trust COVID-19 vaccines?

On September 13th, the UK’s four chief medical officers concluded that children aged 12 and over can be offered one dose of the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccination. There has been much debate about whether all children and younger teenagers should be offered vaccinations, with discussion about the safety of vaccines, consent from children and the need…