News and Blog

Absent Friends and Absent Enemies: reflections on the Radical Social Innovation Colloquium

  Let me introduce you to Moran’s Law of Academic Conferences: the more a conference draws on a single discipline, the less interesting it is.   The most mind numbingly boring conferences now are those lumbering leviathans, the Annual Conferences of  professional associations, where the only way to survive is to disappear to the bar to…

Education, austerity and elitist political language: the rise of UKIP in understanding the Brex-factor

This article looks at the reasons behind the ‘rise of UKIP’ since 2013 and applies it to our data on young people and the EU referendum under three headings: employment and education; austerity; and political language. The findings show a divide in support between those who left school at 17 or 18 and those still…

WISERD Engagement – Civil Society Seminar: “Hidden Entrepreneurs? Social Innovation in Italy”

On May 12th WISERD was pleased to welcome Professor Filippo Barbera (University of Torino and Collegio Carlo Alberto) who gave the latest seminar in the WISERD Civil Society series. Chaired by WISERD Co-Director Prof Paul Chaney, his interesting and well-attended presentation explored the role of “social innovators” in Italy. Drawing on a qualitative research design…

New Website for WISERD Civil Society Project: Trade Union Membership, Associational Life and Wellbeing

Today WISERD launches its new webpages related to the research programme on trade unions within the WISERD Civil Society Centre: www.wiserd.ac.uk/unions ‘Declining levels of trade union membership is often cited as evidence that trade unions have become less relevant within the modern UK economy.  However, previous WISERD research into geographical variations in trade union membership…

What’s devolution got to do with it? Youth (dis)engagement in the run-up to the EU referendum

With the dust settling on the devolved election results last week and showing a 3% increase in turnout in Wales, now is a good time to explore the links between devolution and political engagement, particularly among young people, and ask what can we learn from this in the run-up to the EU referendum? In terms…