News and Blog

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…

According to available estimates, residents living in more rural areas of Wales generally need to travel farthest to access a number of key services. Take access to GP surgeries, for instance. A two-way journey by car to a local GP surgery is considered to take, on average, between 10-14 minutes for those living in smaller…

Dr Alexandra Plows shares her experience of a Knowledge Exchange Fellowship pilot scheme to enable Welsh Assembly Members to develop policy and practice: Between March and June 2017, Dr Alexandra Plows was engaged on a Knowledge Exchange (KE) Fellowship pilot scheme with the National Assembly for Wales (NAfW) – sharing expertise to enable Assembly Members to…

WISERD’s Dr Scott Orford from Cardiff University was featured in two parts of a three part series on BBC Radio 4’s ‘You and Yours’ programme, exploring why rates of empty shops are higher in Wales than they are in other parts of the UK.   Image credit: Gwydion M. Williams (CC BY 2.0)

WISERD’s Centre for Welsh Politics and Society is based at Aberystwyth University

Dr Dan Evans uses WISERD research to examine young people’s apathy with the Welsh political process This article was originally published on The Conversation. Click to read the original article. After 20 years of devolved politics, one would assume that Wales’s government and parliament would have solidified its place in the country, and the people of…