Publications

This article examines the potential of UNICEF’s Child Friendly City (CFC) initiative to improve the lives of children and young people. Based on an analysis of the priorities and plans of three CFCs in the USA (Houston), England (London) and France (Lyon), and drawing on Fraser’s analytical framework, the article examines their capacity to address…

As part of a larger ESRC-funded project on the political economies of school exclusions in the UK, this research examines alternative provision (AP). AP is where children and young people at risk of exclusion are removed from mainstream education. The AP sector does not provide a transitional pathway. Instead it is a complex disarray of…

This article explores the complex relationship between civil society, social inequality, and nationhood through examining the motivations of elite members of Welsh civil society as they volunteer to serve on the boards of a wide range of Welsh charities. We interviewed nearly 60 trustees and patrons, all of whom enjoyed successful and influential careers in…

This paper is concerned with the reproduction of rural elites and the role of volunteering and participation in rural civil society institutions. Set in the context of popular discourses of the gentleman farmer and the agricultural elite as historic (as opposed to contemporary) leaders in the countryside, this research extends longstanding debates on rural class…

Forecasts suggest that Europe is about to enter a period of significant depopulation, with Eurostat projecting that the total population of the European Union will decrease by 6% by 2100. For Wales, the models are both more sanguine and more variable, with population growth slowing or plateauing from the mid2020s. Population growth in Wales is…

Planning disputes are sites of contestation in which science-based regulations come into conflict with the place-based knowledge of local communities. The procedural and often technical nature of these regulations means that these controversies are marked by an asymmetry of resources that is often experienced by community groups as an asymmetry in credibility. In short, the…

Migration, Community and Identity analyses experiences of migration to rural Wales from 1965 to 1980. It focuses on people who were part of the era’s counterculture, looking for an escape from mainstream society. Using original interviews, the book shows why people moved and how the move shaped their lives and identities. Drawing together geographical and historical…

This commentary proposes the adoption of a spatial justice approach to under-standing the multiple crises facing rural Britain and developing policy responses. It introduces spatial justice as a concept rooted in urban studies but recently ex-tended by an emerging literature on rural spatial justice, and outlines a multidi-mensional framework in which spatial justice may be…

Demands for independence have increased across Europe in the last decade,but there are limits to our understanding of what makes secessionist partiesmore ambiguous or assertive on independence. This article’s originalcontribution to the literature on regionalist parties in Western Europe is inaddressing gaps in understanding of secessionist party strategy.Consequently, its original theoretical contribution is to enrich…

Can we remake local economies from scratch – not through political struggle but by design – to solve wicked problems and transform urban governance? Such questions are raised by an emergent trend within urban experimentation that emphasises participation and commoning in designing peer-to-peer provisioning systems through a platform logic. This article deconstructs the discourses animating…