News and Blog

A recent call from MPs to put a 25p levy on disposable coffee cups, and bans on plastic products cropping up across the country, show that the UK is getting serious about tackling collective individual behaviour which threatens the environment. Large-scale programmes aimed at changing people’s behaviour are rare – but they do happen. Take…

According to available estimates, residents living in more rural areas of Wales generally need to travel farthest to access a number of key services. Take access to GP surgeries, for instance. A two-way journey by car to a local GP surgery is considered to take, on average, between 10-14 minutes for those living in smaller…

Dr Alexandra Plows shares her experience of a Knowledge Exchange Fellowship pilot scheme to enable Welsh Assembly Members to develop policy and practice: Between March and June 2017, Dr Alexandra Plows was engaged on a Knowledge Exchange (KE) Fellowship pilot scheme with the National Assembly for Wales (NAfW) – sharing expertise to enable Assembly Members to…

Dr Dan Evans uses WISERD research to examine young people’s apathy with the Welsh political process This article was originally published on The Conversation. Click to read the original article. After 20 years of devolved politics, one would assume that Wales’s government and parliament would have solidified its place in the country, and the people of…

Hardly a day goes by without discussion of immigration in the media. Recently, the leaking of a Home Office document outlined plans to limit immigration from the EU after Brexit, and once again, the report and surrounding discussion focused on the perceived shortcomings of immigration. We have interviewed 40 key stakeholders representing 25 organisations run…

Siôn Llewelyn Jones explores how parents choose the medium of their child’s education Recently, the Welsh Government set a target of increasing the number of Welsh speakers to 1 million by 2050. The Welsh Government considers Welsh-medium education to be central in achieving this target. At the moment, in South-East Wales, parents choose whether to…

Dr Sophie Yarker on the unique shared Remembrance Day practices in Aberystwyth Remembrance Sunday and its parades, wreath-laying and fundraising provides perhaps one of the clearest examples of the coming together of civil society through a shared practice of memorialisation. Although dominated nationally by the Royal British Legion’s Poppy Appeal, at a community level there…

Josie Phillips has recently graduated from her third year of a sociology degree at Cardiff University. This summer, Josie undertook a research placement at the Wales Institute of Social and Economic Research, Data and Methods (WISERD), assisting Dr Esther Muddiman with a project about the passing on of values between family members. As my third year of…

Louise Taylor is in the second year of her sociology degree at Cardiff University. This summer she took part in a Cardiff Undergraduate Research Opportunities Programme (CUROP) placement at the Wales Institute of Social and Economic Research, Data and Methods (WISERD). Louise has been working with Dr Esther Muddiman on a project about intergenerational values….

We often think about what young people can expect to gain from university, or what universities contribute to society. But it’s not often that we talk about how higher education can change society beyond the shaping of individuals. As tuition fees rise, and universities are cast in increasingly intense competition for students and staff, their…