Publications

Oswald Spengler’s Der Untergang des Abendlandes (The Decline of the West), despite much scholarly criticism, was popular in the two decades following publication in 1918. It is now a book that many people know about, but that few have read. Perhaps it was always so. This is not the place to reconsider in detail Spengler’s massive…

David Davies, of Llandinam (1880–1944) was undoubtedly the most influential person in the peace movement in Wales during the first half of the 20th century. The grandson of a prominent Welsh industrialist and businessman, also David Davies, he inherited great wealth, from a family of preeminent social standing in Montgomeryshire, his county of birth. This permitted…

Wide tensions regarding the organization of nation-state power have been triggered over the last years in the UK and Spain. By contrast, in the UK, (i) the plebiscite on Scottish Independence has been characterized since 2014 so far by a regular hegemony of the SNP in Scotland, and (ii) more recently, distinct resilient responses to…

The paper considers the life and career of the prominent Welsh adult educator, civil servant, and cultural diplomat Sir Ben Bowen Thomas (1899-1977). He was born into a Christian Baptist family at Treorci, Ystrad Rhondda, Glamorgan, where his father Jonathan was a coal miner. His mother, Ann, was the sister of the poet Ben Bowen….

This Special Issue presents new perspectives on the idea of digital citizenship by delving into the nexus between its emerging concepts, the consequences of the global pandemic crisis, and the urban environment. It does so by addressing a wide range of case studies from three continents and developing two main hypotheses. First, the COVID-19 outbreak…

COVID-19 has hit citizens dramatically during 2020, not only creating a general risk-driven environment encompassing a wide array of economic vulnerabilities but also exposing them to pervasive digital risks, such as biosurveillance, misinformation, and e-democracy algorithmic threats. Over the course of the pandemic, a debate has emerged about the appropriate democratic and technopolitical response when…

This article provides a comprehensive analysis of the dynamic relationship between disability and welfare benefit receipt in Britain. Exploiting rarely used longitudinal data, it examines the impact of disability onset and disability exit on receipt of a range of beneficial outcomes, utilizing differences in the timing of onset/exit for identification. Disability onset increases receipt of…

This report was produced in November 2022 as part of research undertaken by the Wales Institute of Social and Economic Research and Data (WISERD) as part of its ESRC Centre research programme. Fifteen remote interviews were conducted in English or Welsh (depending on the participant’s choice) by three researchers (Dr Beel, Prof IR Jones, Dr…

This book is in Bloomsbury Academic’s History of Modern Russia series. Wayne Dowler provides in a single, short volume an excellent, readable account of the system of education in modern Russia. This is difficult to do, considering the vicissitudes of the country’s modern history. It is timely as Russia enters of its own accord into another period…

Introduction Events surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic drew attention to the importance of local neighbourhoods as people were encouraged wherever possible to work from home, the physical and mental health benefits of active means of travel were promoted, and communities became more reliant on services in their local areas. At the same time governments around the…