News and Blog

WISERD has recently been awarded ESRC funding to carry out a new interdisciplinary study into how young people in the UK feel about, and are responding to, the most significant policy issue of this Parliament: the UK’s exit from the European Union. Young People and Brexit will include new and existing WISERD research, employing a variety…

After yesterday’s ‘trigger warning’ we await with bated breath the news that Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty has been enacted. This will kick off two years of UK-EU negotiation followed by what is likely to be a slow and complex process of disentangling legislation post EU-exit. Today’s date could herald a new wave of political domination…

As part of the Young People and Brexit project, WISERD will be creating a series of short films with young people. In this blog, Dr Sioned Pearce discusses some of the questions that the films will be asking. This week I sat on a debating panel to discuss young people and politics at the National Assembly…

The decision to leave the European Union on 23rd June 2016 was potentially the most dramatic ever taken by the British electorate. Not only did it fly in the face of the expectations of the majority of the media, opinion pollsters and politicians (both in the UK and Europe), but it has come to dominate politics…

Elin Jones AM will open up the debate around youth engagement today at the Pierhead Building.  The event Young people, politics and the future direction of youth engagement in Wales follows on from WISERD research and will feature the screening of two short films presenting recent findings on young people’s attitudes towards and engagement with…

Since February 2016 we at WISERD have been running a small project on Young People and the EU Referendum in partnership with Youth Cymru, the Council for Wales of Voluntary Youth Services (CWVYS) and the National Assembly for Wales’ Youth Engagement Team and our talented cameraman Justin at Farsight Creative. As well as writing around 30 blogs on this site, giving presentations at…

WISERD research was given prominent attention at the 2016 Voluntary Sector and Volunteering Research Conference. This is one of the UK’s foremost forums for research on civil society and the third sector, with diverse presentations from academics and practitioners. It was jointly hosted by the National Council for Voluntary Organisations (NCVO), the Voluntary Sector Studies…

Just 18 weeks passed between the announcement of a UK referendum on EU membership, and the vote for Brexit. In this startlingly short time an intense and competitive environment sprung-up as the two official campaigns Vote Leave and Britain Stronger in Europe made their case. Both sides quickly succumbed to name calling, dishonesties and emotional arguments. As a result…

Dr Sioned Pearce explores trust in relation to voting preference in the EU Referendum campaigns. The study found remarkably low levels of trust for the campaigns on both sides among all age groups, adding to the argument that the campaigns tapped-into mistrust rather than created it over an 18 week period. For Dr Sioned Pearce’s blog post…

Last week (4th-6th July) I attended the 11th international Interpretive Policy Analysis (IPA) Conference in Hull, 2017 UK City of Culture. This article reflects on the conference and the IPA. Most importantly, it highlights the sense and benefits of an IPA community within which a milieu of interdisciplinary and international social and policy researchers can reside. Variation in topics covered…