News and Blog

New research by WISERD Co-Director, Professor Paul Chaney analyses civil society organisations’ perspectives on how the UK, Welsh, Scottish and Northern Ireland governments are responding to their international human rights treaty obligations in the formulation and delivery of social policy. This socio-legal study is the first that examines human rights and the territorialisation of social welfare…

      This report provides an overview of our research activity in 2019 – a year that has marked the end of one chapter and the beginning of another, and has strengthened WISERD’s position as an important national research centre. Read more about our latest income profile, the work we’re doing to strengthen our…

New research by WISERD Co-Director, Professor Paul Chaney and Dr Sarbeswar Sahoo (Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi) analyses civil society organisations’ (CSOs’) perspectives on religious freedom violations in Bangladesh. These have been recently thrown into stark relief following the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution in 2011 that confirmed Islam as the State religion of the…

Empty supermarket shelves have been a scary symptom of the COVID-19 crisis. From daily staples to sneaky snacks, we’re running low. Those shelves reveal something we don’t normally need to think about: here in Wales, our dinners depend on imported food, supply chains, and distribution networks. Could panic at the shops have been averted if…

  Catherine Calderwood, forced to resign as Scotland’s chief medical officer, is far from the only city dweller to have caused controversy by flouting lockdown rules to visit her second home in the countryside. Resentment over “coronavirus holidays” is rising. The Covid-19 crisis has prompted some to seek to escape the city. Green spaces are…

The team of researchers leading WISERD’s foundational economy work has contributed to a COVID-19 report, which makes a case for renewal of the foundational economy, after the immediate public health crisis is over. The crisis demonstrates the importance of the foundational economy, that part of the economy which produces essential goods and services consumed by…

I have followed WISERD’s civil society project with great interest over the years. There is much for civil society organisations to learn from and to reflect upon in Wales as elsewhere. Yet in all of WISERD’s work there was a gap – and that was on think tanks. I was therefore delighted when WISERD asked…

New research by WISERD Co-Director, Professor Paul Chaney, analyses civil society organisations’ (CSOs’)  perspectives on the implementation of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). Over the past decade, the majority of CIS countries have finally ratified the CRPD, offering new rights for the region’s…

Professor John Morgan’s 2019 book Philosophy, Dialogue, and Education: Nine modern European philosophers (with A. A. Guilherme), Routledge, London and New York, has been translated into Portuguese and published in Brazil by the UNESCO Chair of Youth, Education, and Society, the Catholic University of Brazilia, DF, 2020.

“Just think about it, next year, both the Durham Miners’ Gala and the Notting Hill Carnival will take place in seats represented by Conservative MPs” Michael Gove, December 2019. The Durham Miners’ Gala, established in 1871, is the largest annual gathering of trade unionists in the UK. Despite the last coal mine in County Durham…