News and Blog

Our previous studies examining variation in access to sporting facilities in relation to socio-economic patterns in Wales have been predicated on an assumption of private travel as the means of transport. We are now including travel distances and times for alternative modes of transport as part of our accessibility calculations. These are derived from an…

The role of voluntary organisations in tackling polarisation in local communities will be discussed by the Future Generations Commissioner in Aberystwyth next month. Aberystwyth University academics from the Wales Institute of Social and Economic Research and Data (WISERD) will jointly host a symposium with partners from the Voluntary Sector Studies Network on Wednesday 24 May…

The relationship between voter discontent in rural areas and support for disruptive political movements in Europe and the United States will be explored in a major study by a Aberystwyth University professor, following the award of a prestigious grant. Professor Michael Woods has secured funding of nearly €2.5 million from the European Research Council (ERC)…

Citizen science is a popular method of gathering data for natural and social scientists, with the number of projects and publications produced growing year by year. A typical citizen science project uses volunteers to gather data that would otherwise be unaffordable or inaccessible. But, based on the evidence we gathered during our study of a…

It probably comes as no surprise to hear that you can travel further in less time when travelling by private transport, such as in a car, than by public transport using a bus or a train. However, have you ever wondered what this difference looks like visually for the place where you live or work?…

In our last blog post we looked at how WISERD’s free interactive mapping tool UnionMaps reveals the complex patterns in trade union membership that exist across Great Britain. Analysis revealed that the overall downward trend in union density that is observed across Great Britain as a whole masks very different local fortunes for the trade…

Recent waves of strike action by nurses, train drivers, ambulance drivers, university lecturers, teachers and others besides has highlighted the prominent position that trade unions continue to hold within the UK. An important factor that determines the power and influence of trade unions, either within an organisation or across a sector, is the proportion of…

A new WISERD paper by Andrew Price, Mitchel Langford and Gary Higgs at the University of South Wales has recently been published in the journal, Case Studies on Transport Policy. Using sports facility data from Sport Wales and open-source data on green spaces, the team examine variations in potential access to recreational opportunities by different…

Professor Michael Woods presented findings from the CWPS-WISERD-led Horizon 2020 project IMAJINE to the Third Joint EU Cohesion Policy Conference in Zagreb in November. Jointly organized by the European Commission Directorate-General for Regional and Urban Policy (DG-Regio), the Regional Studies Association and the Croatian Government, the conference brought together 150 academics, EU policymakers and member…

As part of WISERD’s ESRC-funded Civil Society Centre research programme, a team of WISERD researchers have published a new report on the process of developing and implementing the North Wales Growth Deal (NWGD), based on observations from a series of interviews with stakeholders between July-December 2021. Fifteen remote interviews were conducted by three researchers: Dr…