News and Blog

First Minister Mark Drakeford’s government’s decision making during the pandemic was under scrutiny last month at the Covid-19 Inquiry in Cardiff. This newly published paper highlights the failures of state decision making in exacerbating older people’s health and social care conditions, which before the COVID-19 pandemic already put them at risk of harm and indignity….

In February 2024, WISERD co-directors, Professor Alan Felstead and Rhys Davies hosted hackathons in Sheffield and Belfast for human resource managers interested in improving job quality for their teams. Organised by the PrOPEL Hub and attended by nearly 100 managers from a range of private, public and third sector businesses, including government departments, social care…

On 17 January, following a two-year national conversation, the Independent Commission on the Constitutional Future of Wales published their report. The publication outlined three potential options for Wales’s constitutional future: enhanced devolution, a federal UK and an independent Wales. WISERD Co-Director, Dr Anwen Elias, is a member of the Commission and part of the Centre…

A team led by WISERD-CWPS Co-Director Michael Woods has been awarded over £5m by UKRI to establish Cymru Wledig LPIP Rural Wales, the Rural Wales Local Policy and Innovation Partnership. The partnership includes CWPS members Lowri Cunnington Wynn and Rhys Jones as well as researchers at Aberystwyth, Bangor, Cardiff and Gloucestershire universities and non-academic partners…

On 25 January, WISERD and Welsh Higher Education Brussels (WHEB) hosted a workshop for policymakers in Brussels and made a case for civil society research being put at the heart of plans for the European Union. Later this year, members of the European Council will meet to agree the Strategic Agenda for the European Union…

The Isle of Anglesey is the focus of a research project which aims to measure the knowledge and impacts of climate change on local communities. Cardiff University academics are part of the team, led by Cambridge University in collaboration with Wrexham University, which will create a model for gathering localised data which could inform and…

On 30 November, Professor Mitch Langford, a WISERD co-director based at the University of South Wales (USW), presented WISERD research from the ESRC-funded project, ‘Inequalities, civic loss and well-being’, to the Climate Change, Environment, and Infrastructure Committee at the Senedd. The Senedd’s Areas of Research Interest (ARI) event comprised a series of speed talks made…

Last year, on the 30th anniversary of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities, the Special Rapporteur on Minority Rights, Fernand de Varennes, called for a new treaty to better recognize and protect the rights of minorities. On behalf of the Coppieters Foundation, Dr. Anwen Elias has written…

Professor Michael Woods gave oral evidence to the House of Commons Welsh Affairs Committee in early December on their inquiry on the Impact of Population Change in Wales. He presented findings from the Survey of Young People in Rural Wales. Read the survey report here.

Earlier this year, the IDEAL team performed The Bridge, a new one-act opera about the experience of living with dementia. One audience member wrote that the opera was “excellent, thought-provoking and needs to be broadcast further.” The IDEAL team have recently launched the film of the English language performance. Watch The Bridge As part of…