News and Blog

For the past 30 years there has been substantial focus in the UK on the issues related to the physical size and condition of schools, and how it may affect pupils’ academic progress, achievement and overall school experience. Young people’s perspectives of their environments are reflected through cultures and organisation, as well as physical structures…

We are working on an ethnography of Six Bells, which was once a pit village on the eastern borders of the South Wales coalfield. Our primary interest lies in the significance of Guardian, a memorial erected in 2010 to commemorate a mining disaster in the village that resulted in the death of 45 miners in…

A new WISERD international partnership project examining civil society in India and Bangladesh has been announced. The project, entitled “Exploring effective practice in civil society organisations’ promotion of human rights, good governance and social justice in India and Bangladesh” is led by Professor Paul Chaney (Cardiff University) and Sahoo Sarbeswar (Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi). Funded by the…

An enquiry into rough sleeping by the National Assembly’s Equality, Local Government and Communities Committee this morning heard evidence from Dr Peter Mackie, Chair of WISERD’s Housing Research Network. Dr Mackie told the Committee that recent changes in Welsh housing laws with the Housing Act 2014, while effective on a wider basis, haven’t worked as…

The seemingly unending decline of trust in politicians and the political process has been a recurring story within the media in recent years. In January, the annual Edelman Trust Barometer reported a “global implosion of trust”, with levels of trust in government falling across half of the countries surveyed, from South Africa to Spain. Politicians…

Professor Sally Power, Director of WISERD Education, warned against using the new Welsh Government school colour categorisations as a results league table. Prof Power told the Western Mail that “categorisation is more useful for schools and local authorities, and is not a very useful indication for parents to select a school.” As well as appearing in the Western…

Dr Stuart Fox suggests there was no real increase in youth turnout at last year’s election After the polls closed in the 2017 general election, the ‘youthquake’ quickly became one of the hottest talking points amongst academics, politicians and journalists alike. Driven on by photographs on social media of young people queuing outside polling stations,…

13% of shops on Welsh high streets were vacant in 2017

In 2014 we embarked on a comparative study of two villages in North East Wales. Our research focused on how people come together in local areas – in clubs, societies and groups – and observed how such association is changing. We spent two years interviewing local people, listening to their life histories and experiences, observing…

A recent call from MPs to put a 25p levy on disposable coffee cups, and bans on plastic products cropping up across the country, show that the UK is getting serious about tackling collective individual behaviour which threatens the environment. Large-scale programmes aimed at changing people’s behaviour are rare – but they do happen. Take…