News and Blog

A team led by WISERD-CWPS Co-Director Michael Woods has been awarded over £5m by UKRI to establish Cymru Wledig LPIP Rural Wales, the Rural Wales Local Policy and Innovation Partnership. The partnership includes CWPS members Lowri Cunnington Wynn and Rhys Jones as well as researchers at Aberystwyth, Bangor, Cardiff and Gloucestershire universities and non-academic partners…

As part of the WISERD study ‘New arenas for civic expansion: humans, animals, and Artificial Intelligence (AI)’ we presented new research at a WHEB event in Brussels last month, that reveals the views and concerns of civil society organisations (CSOs) in relation to Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the EU. The European Commission is legislating to…

On 25 January, WISERD and Welsh Higher Education Brussels (WHEB) hosted a workshop for policymakers in Brussels and made a case for civil society research being put at the heart of plans for the European Union. Later this year, members of the European Council will meet to agree the Strategic Agenda for the European Union…

The Isle of Anglesey is the focus of a research project which aims to measure the knowledge and impacts of climate change on local communities. Cardiff University academics are part of the team, led by Cambridge University in collaboration with Wrexham University, which will create a model for gathering localised data which could inform and…

In Anarchical Fallacies (1796), the English utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham said that the concept of natural rights was nonsense and that to claim rights not prescribed in the laws of the state was ‘nonsense on stilts.’ He argued that to confuse wishing that we possessed a right with the existence of the right itself was…

On 30 November, Professor Mitch Langford, a WISERD co-director based at the University of South Wales (USW), presented WISERD research from the ESRC-funded project, ‘Inequalities, civic loss and well-being’, to the Climate Change, Environment, and Infrastructure Committee at the Senedd. The Senedd’s Areas of Research Interest (ARI) event comprised a series of speed talks made…

Last year, on the 30th anniversary of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities, the Special Rapporteur on Minority Rights, Fernand de Varennes, called for a new treaty to better recognize and protect the rights of minorities. On behalf of the Coppieters Foundation, Dr. Anwen Elias has written…

Professor Michael Woods gave oral evidence to the House of Commons Welsh Affairs Committee in early December on their inquiry on the Impact of Population Change in Wales. He presented findings from the Survey of Young People in Rural Wales. Read the survey report here.

Earlier this year, the IDEAL team performed The Bridge, a new one-act opera about the experience of living with dementia. One audience member wrote that the opera was “excellent, thought-provoking and needs to be broadcast further.” The IDEAL team have recently launched the film of the English language performance. Watch The Bridge As part of…

In October, as part of WISERD’s civil society and animal welfare research, a workshop was held in New Delhi. Academics present included co-investigators Professors Paul Chaney and Sarbeswar Sahoo, along with Research Associates Dr Pooja Sharma and Dr Debashree Saikia (pictured). Our work involves comparative analysis of developments in Wales, Scotland, England and India. We…