Publications

Trust has long been identified as an essential component of social, economic and political life. Since the mid-1990s, there has been renewed interest in the concept driven by its perceived decline and reengagement with concepts of social capital. The article acknowledges these debates, especially the general context of decline in trust in western democracies, including…

In the ninety years since the foundation of the CPRW in 1928, rural Wales has changed substantially, yet it is far from fanciful to draw parallels between the challenges that concerned the organization in its early days and those facing the Welsh countryside today, or to see continuities in the underlying vulnerability of rural Wales…

This paper explores a new approach to pedestrian modelling using multivariate hybrid spatial network analysis. Using a case study of Cardiff, Wales it demonstrates how the approach can be used to predict pedestrian flows after a major development of the city centre including the construction of a new purpose built shopping mall. The model is…

The intensification of global mobility has introduced international migration to rural areas and small towns with little or no significant recent history of immigration. Drawing on an emergent literature in rural studies, this paper seeks to consolidate the concept of ‘rural cosmopolitanism’ both as a political or ethical project, and in relation to the ‘actual-existing…

Gwerddon, 26(2) The Foundation Phase (FP) is a statutory curriculum in each state school in Wales since 2008. The curriculum follows a developmentally appropriate pedagogy, and encourages children to engage by learning through experiences. The paper that follows is taken from a wider evaluation of the FP, commissioned by Welsh Government in 2012 and considers…

The Labour Force Survey is used to examine the influence of sector on the UK gender pay gap 1997–2015. The assessment is twofold: first comparing gender pay gaps within sectors and second through identifying the contribution of the concentration of women in the public sector to the overall gender pay gap. The long-term narrowing of…

WISERD Education was launched in 2012 in order to change the landscape of educational research in Wales. The main aims of the Programme were: to enhance the capacity to carry out high quality educational research within the higher education sector in Wales; •    to undertake research activities designed to improve the quality of learning and…

In this article we discuss findings from our ethnography investigating how volunteering in local associational life is changing, asking whether structural factors fixed in localities remain important or whether, as others have suggested, volunteering is becoming disembedded from place. Across two locations, we observe how situational variables, including belonging, identification and interaction, remain important determinants…

In July 2017, the Welsh Government appointed OB3 Research, in conjunction with WISERD, to undertake an evaluation of the Seren Network. A formative and process evaluation of the Seren Network was commissioned to inform decisions about the criteria for young people’s participation and the design and delivery of the programme at national and local levels….

This report reveals the latest figures of Wales’ Towns and Cities including the number of retail premises, the vacancy rates, the retail structure and the relationship with socio-economic characteristics and geographical typology. The main takeaways: The vacancy rate decreased in Wales in all three location types (Retail parks, high streets and shopping centres) that LDC track and…