News and Blog

Area level variations of school exclusions across Wales

School practices on discipline and punishment of disruptive behaviour can affect the exclusion rates being recorded and they have been shown to vary across different jurisdictions of the UK. These practices could be closely linked to and shaped by pupil-level characteristics and needs, including free school meals (FSM) eligibility and special education needs (SEN) provision…

WISERD Director elected to BERA Council

WISERD Director, Professor Sally Power, has been elected to sit on the British Educational Research Association (BERA) Council. BERA is a membership association and learned society committed to advancing research quality, building research capacity and fostering research engagement. They aim to inform the development of policy and practice by promoting the best quality evidence produced…

WISERD and Future Economies Book Launch

  On the 19th of May, WISERD and the Future Economies University Research Centre based at Manchester Metropolitan University, held an online event to launch two books: City Regions and Devolution in the UK and The Political Economy of Industrial Strategy in the UK. The event featured discussion from the authors, alongside commentary from an…

Tackling air quality monitoring with a citizen science group

Popular conceptions of science as ‘objective’ and ‘neutral’ suggest it sits outside the problems of rights and justice that often characterise the discourse around civil society. Developments in social science and community activism since at least the 1960s – eg, the Love Canal scandal in the US – show that this view is deeply flawed….

WISERD professor elected as Learned Society of Wales Fellow

  Professor Kevin Morgan is among this year’s newly elected fellows of The Learned Society of Wales. The Learned Society of Wales was established in 2010 in the absence of a national society of learning in Wales. Its aims are to contribute to advancing and promoting excellence in all scholarly disciplines, which includes providing independent…

Characteristics of excluded children in Wales

Annual official reports published by the Welsh Government primarily focus on exclusion instances; their yearly trends and variations by key characteristics, such as ethnicity and reason for exclusion. However, there is a need to expand this analysis by focusing on excluded individuals and the potential consequences of school exclusions on pupil outcomes. This would be…

What mass-support e-petitions on animal welfare tell us about new modes of civil society engagement with Westminster

In this second blog post, Professor Paul Chaney continues to share his research with Professors Ian Rees Jones and Ralph Fevre published by Oxford University Press and The Hansard Society, which analyses the significant rise in animal welfare petitions submitted to the UK parliament over the past decade. This analysis is part of the research project, New arenas for civic…

New modes of civic engagement – exploring Westminster public petitions on animal welfare

New research by WISERD Professors Paul Chaney, Ian Rees Jones and Ralph Fevre  published by Oxford University Press and The Hansard Society, analyses a significant rise in animal welfare petitions submitted to the UK parliament over the past decade. This analysis is part of the research project,  New arenas for civic expansion: humans, animals, and…