News and Blog

As part of a series of blog posts on WISERD’s civil society and animal welfare research, here we look at the “territorialisation” of animal welfare rights and how this is being driven by civil society activism. In other words, civil society organisations (CSOs) successfully lobbying for distinctive laws and policies that convey contrasting protections in…

As part of a series of blog posts on civil society and animal welfare, here we look at emerging findings from our analysis of civil society organisations’ (CSOs’) campaigning to ban greyhound racing in Wales and Scotland. This is prompted by welfare concerns and relatedly, because races in these countries are not subject to statutory…

International, comparative and action research can be shaped through an unexpected and highly unpredictable rationale when conducting fieldwork research. In 1946, Kurt Lewin defined action research as ‘transformative research on the conditions and effects of various forms of social action that employs a spiral of steps, each consisting of a cycle of planning, action, and…

As part of a series of blog posts on our research on civil society activism and animal welfare rights, here we share some emerging findings on the impact of devolution in the UK. A key finding from our series of in-depth interviews with campaigners representing civil society organisations (CSOs) is their frustration with Westminster and…

While academic literature on environmentalism has long emphasised the interdependence and fragility of all life forms on earth, scholarly work on civil society has largely overlooked the position of non-humans. Our research is seeking to address this by examining contemporary civil society advocacy for animal welfare rights in the UK. As part of a series…

I recently presented new WISERD research on human rights during the pandemic at the International Political Studies Association Congress in Buenos Aires. My research findings aligned with the conference theme of ‘Politics in the Age of Transboundary Crises’ and examine how political elites in East Africa used the crisis as a pretext for rights suppression….

The Welsh Index of Multiple Deprivation (WIMD) is the Welsh Government’s official measure of relative (‘ranked’) deprivation for small areas in Wales. WIMD is used by government and other organisations to target services to address social disadvantage. For example, as part of their programme to increase access to higher education, the Higher Education Funding Council…

Principal Research Fellow, Dr Igor Calzada has been awarded a Learned Society of Wales grant to take forward his transdisciplinary social sciences research on Wales and Basque Country cooperation with an online workshop on 5 May. Wales and the Basque Country share some interesting commonalities in their development, allowing for opportunities to discuss devolution and…

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…