Publications

The increasing integration of rural communities into transnational social and economic networks has unsettled the politics of rural regions across the globe. Through much of the 20th century, rural economies and societies in the advanced industrial nations of Europe, North America, Japan and Australasia (the ‘global north’) were defined and governed in relation to national…

This paper examines the positioning of the Welsh education system within contemporary policy debate and analysis. It begins by outlining some of the ways in which education policy and provision in Wales differs from that of its neighbour, England, and then goes on to critique how these differences have been represented in both the media…

This chapter is part of a collection of essays that put contemporary Wales under the microscope. Examining issues such as class, gender, culture and the Welsh language, Our Changing Land presents a complex and often contradictory picture of a nation. The book also continues a discourse begun over thirty years ago in the 1994 Our Sisters’ Land (edited by Jane Aaron,…

This book explores how culture and citizenship are theorised, promoted and learned throughout schools in Wales. Following a brief history of Welsh education and a discussion of how contemporary cultural identity is theorised through citizenship education curricula, it illustrates how archaic approaches to understanding cultural identity continue to undermine the development of culturally relevant curriculum in…

The purpose of this article is twofold: firstly, to discuss what teachers in Wales think about the Welsh Government’s recent education (mainly school) policies, and secondly, to suggest how the educational system in Wales might be improved. It is based on the findings from a general survey conducted by the Wales Institute of Social &…

Two-step floating catchment area (2SFCA) techniques are popular for measuring potential geographical accessibility to health care services. This paper proposes methodological enhancements to increase the sophistication of the 2SFCA methodology by incorporating both public and private transport modes using dedicated network datasets. The proposed model yields separate accessibility scores for each modal group at each…

There have been three main accounts of East Asian export-oriented economic growth in the 1980s: getting prices right, the developmental state (DS), and Confucian capitalism. None is satisfactory and, together, they reproduce the market—state—civil society triplet, which originates in European Enlightenment thinking, and one-sidedly highlight the roots of the miracle in one or other of…

Happiness at work is a popular topic. This Research Note explores measures of job satisfaction that are available from 3 nationally representative surveys that are conducted within Britain; the Skills and Employment Surveys, the Workplace Employment Relations Survey and the British Household Panel Survey. Indices of satisfaction with work can be constructed from these sources…

This article examines student accounts of credentials, talent and academic success, against a backdrop of the enduring liberal ideal of an education-based meritocracy. The article also examines Bourdieu’s account of academic qualifications as the dominant source of institutionalised cultural capital, and concludes that it does not adequately account for comparative differences in the social structure…

Using critical discourse analysis, this twelve-country study addresses a key lacuna by examining civil society perspectives on the implementation of the Participative Democratic Model (PDM) of gender mainstreaming in post-conflict states. The findings reveal specific data, transitional justice, and governance challenges in war-affected states as policy actors press for heightened attention to issues such as…