News and Blog

The Merthyr Rising 2015 festival is a three day event aimed at remembering the town’s radical past and promoting a positive image of the town’s future with a mixture of music, film, performance and debate. SCHeP were proud to take part in this year’s event by sponsoring and supporting the Waun Common Debates These debates were inspired…

How does attention to the Third Sector in Parties’ 2015 Westminster Election Manifestos compare to previous post-war ballots? Compared to issues like the economy, employment, education and health, the voluntary (or “third”) sector is not a topic that is likely to swing the results of a general election. That said, party pledges on the third…

In recent years the political, economic and social climate in which volunteering by older adults occurs has changed significantly, with the onset of an economic downturn, concern about pensions, a change in the public policy context for volunteering following a change of government, and the abolition of default retirement age. The notion of ‘unretirement’ is…

The All Wales Academic Social Care Research Collaboration (ASCC) is a three year programme funded by the National Institute for Social Care and Health Research (NISCHR). ASCC was developed in response to the Huxley (2009) report which identified a clear need for increased social care research capacity, and greater levels of collaboration between academics, social care policy makers and social…

Our lives, and the landscapes in which we live in, are storied in nature. These stories come in many different forms: from policy materials, census data, media reports, official documents and scholarly insight, to authorial fantasy. According to Piatti and Hurni (2011: 218), these stories form a ‘rich geographical layer’ that ‘hovers… above the physically…

On Monday 23rd March, 2015,  Jane Hutt AM, Minister for Finance and Government Business, officially launched the Administrative Data Research Centre Wales at an event at Swansea University. The Administrative Data Research Centre Wales, led by Swansea University’s College of Medicine in partnership with the Wales Institute of Social and Economic Research, Data & Methods (WISERD) at Cardiff University,…

This week the WISERD blog is delighted to host a guest blog relating to the ‘Global Countryside: Rural Change and Development in Globalization (GLOBAL-RURAL)’ – a major research project funded by the European Research Council. This study aims to advance our understanding of the workings and impact of globalization in rural regions through the development and application…

WISERD Education has been exploring children’s responses to a single question: ‘If someone gave you £1 million today, what would you do with it?’ Although such an exploration might seem trivial, we argue that their responses provide important insights into children’s values and priorities. The data from which this paper draws derive from a self-completion survey…

With just 50 days until the UK general election the opinions of young people are becoming ever more important to politicians. However research suggests that young people are becoming increasingly disengaged from the political system, with many feeling that politicians are failing to discuss the issues which matter to them. Only 41% of those aged 18 to 25…

Today the heart breaking news of the death of best-selling author Sir Terry Pratchett weighs heavily on my mind. Sir Terry died on Thursday 12th March, 2015, following an 8 year battle with Alzheimer’s disease; a disease I lost someone very dear to me to a few years ago. Sir Terry never shied away from talking…