News and Blog

In September, we returned from a research exchange trip to Canada. The aim of the visit was to locate recent Civil Society project findings in an international context and develop greater insights through comparative reflection going forward. Canada, as a Federal state, develops and delivers much of its social policy at a Provincial level. This sub-state…

Following nearly a decade of austerity, local authorities face funding challenges that are having major impacts on the ways public services are delivered. Financial pressures, combined with increasing demand and expectations from the public for accessible and timely services, are having a detrimental effect on those social groups most reliant on essential facilities. In our…

People working and volunteering in Welsh towns and communities will benefit from a new resource to help them identify opportunities in their areas.  Understanding Welsh Places is a bilingual website built by a team of researchers at WISERD and coordinated by the Institute of Welsh Affairs. It presents information on the economy, demographic make-up and…

New ESRC grant will see first-time multi-disciplinary research conducted on consequences of school exclusions across the UK, led by the Department of Education at the University of Oxford. Professors Sally Power and Chris Taylor are part of a team of researchers operating across Oxford, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Belfast, Reading and the London School of Economics (LSE)…

A workshop delivered by Aberystwyth University on rural development in Brazil was featured on Brazilian regional TV news in September 2019.

Professor Chris Taylor has been appointed as the new academic director of Cardiff University’s Social Science Research Park (SPARK). WISERD is one of 10 research centres due to relocate to SPARK when the new 12,000 sq.m. building opens its doors in spring 2021. As one of the most exciting developments in the UK social sciences…

Dr Stuart Fox (Brunel University London) and Dr Sioned Pearce (Cardiff University) have received an award for ‘Best paper published in 2018’ from the Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties, an international, peer-reviewed journal that publishes high-quality, original research. The paper, “The generational decay of Euroscepticism in the UK and the EU referendum”, explores…

The marking of someone’s lifelong academic and professional contribution is all too rare so I was delighted when the Foundation for the Sociology of Health and Illness offered to fund a celebration of the life and work of my husband and colleague, Gareth Williams. The event was directly supported by fellow medical sociologists including our…

The WISERD stand attracted much interest from conference-goers. Findings from WISERD’s civil society research featured prominently at the National Council for Voluntary Organisations (NCVO) Annual Conference at Aston University last week (10-11 September). WISERD researchers presented a number of papers, including PhD student Amy Sanders, who shared initial findings from her research on sustaining the…

Today, WISERD launches a new interactive service allowing users to access data on union membership for over 400 unitary authority and local authority districts of Great Britain. UnionMaps allows users to produce area reports of union membership for a particular location or explore how different measures of union membership vary across Great Britain. Since its…