Publications

Historically Wales has been regarded as a country with relatively low levels of school exclusion, particularly in comparison with England. This has been used as an indicator of Wales’ commitment to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which foregrounds a rights-based agenda that would argue school exclusion is a consequence of broader…

This pan-regional analysis of non-governmental organisations’ ( NGO ) perspectives on the contemporary factors which constrain or repress civil society in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations ( ASEAN ) is based on United Nations’ Universal Periodic Review ( UPR ) data. It shows that, paradoxically, whilst the majority of ASEAN states have ratified the…

E-diasporas are networks driven by human agency, connecting digital citizens to their home countries and diasporic fellows through digital tools. In contrast, Hyperconnected Diasporas (HD) are data-driven networks engaged in extractive activities, often employed for government (para)diplomacy, heavily relying on social media extractivist data-opolies or Big Tech platforms. This article examines the impact of disruptive…

This paper employs a discursive institutionalist lens to examine the efficacy of the Welsh statutory partnership between the government and the third sector (that is, the voluntary sector, the economic sector consisting of non-governmental organisations and other non-profit organisations). This is a governance innovation associated with devolution, designed to foster inclusive governance. It is set…

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…

Despite widespread claims about the benefits of social procurement, there is little robust evidence that emerging social procurement policies are achieving their intended outcomes. Addressing this gap in research, this paper presents a case study of a theoretically informed and methodologically robust evaluative social return on investment (SROI) analysis of a construction training initiative developed…

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…

Using nationally representative longitudinal data from Understanding Society we explore the relationship between disability and political participation in the UK. More specifically, we examine the determinants of the ‘disability voting gap’, and assess how it varies by the severity, type and chronicity of disability. After accounting for demographic characteristics, the disability voting gap across UK General Elections…

Learning has occupied a prominent place in Chinese culture since ancient times with the philosophy and practice of K’ung Ch’iu, (c551-c479, BCE), known to the Occident as Confucius, a pervasive influence (Liu Wu-Chi 1955). The promotion of learning was the duty of Imperial officials, and this also achieved high levels of civic participation by local…

It is estimated that a third of people in the United Kingdom with signs of dementia are living without a formal diagnosis. In Wales, the proportion is nearly half. Some explanations for the gap between prevalence of dementia and number of diagnoses include living with a long-term partner/spouse and systemic barriers to diagnosis. This study…