Publications

The health and wellbeing benefits of engagement with the natural environment are well documented, but a lack of prospective research means that the sustainability of effects is unknown. Nature-based interventions (NBIs) seek to extend benefits to a wide, socially inclusive range of people. The primary aim of this study was to develop an improved understanding…

Recent, UK-based studies have focused on the construction of working-class masculine identity and documented changes and softer displays among young men. This article contributes to this literature and is based on ethnographic research conducted in Wales, UK, and a sample consisting of the most marginalised working-class young men often associated with protest masculinity, homophobia and…

There is now an extensive literature on the related concepts of soft power and modernity. The former is sometimes known as cultural or public diplomacy and is an international relations factor in what is now called hybrid conflict or even war. As is well-known, Joseph Nye, an American political scientist, coined the term “soft-power” in the early 20th Century….

This article contributes to the ongoing discussion on rural development programs aligning with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in the Global South. The research question examines how the Smart Rural Communities (SRC) framework can support the SDGs as an international cooperation model. The article presents findings from fieldwork action research including a critical analysis of…

Territorial cohesion is a guiding set of EU principles to achieve sustainable development. However, evidence suggests that within and across rural and peripheral regions in particular, prosperity and social and economic wellbeing continue to lag behind other regions. The aim of this article is to examine how a spatial justice perspective can provide new development…

COVID-19 has had unprecedented impacts on urban life on a global scale, representing the worst pandemic in living memory. In this introduction to the first of two parts of a Special Issue on urban public health emergencies, we suggest that the COVID-19 outbreak, and associated attempts to manage the pandemic, reproduced and ultimately exacerbated the…

As new municipalism comes of age, prefixes proliferate: from democratic and autonomist to post-growth and care municipalisms. How do all these variegations relate to each other and to the wider movement of which they claim a part? What does all this conceptual creativity amount to, epistemologically and politically? How can we distill the most salient…

This article is based on data collected from almost 100,000 individuals who completed the www.howgoodismyjob.com quiz either side of the pandemic. The results show that overall non-pecuniary job quality has improved, differences between occupations have shrunk and the growth of remote working is a factor behind these trends.

This paper will explore the dichotomy of direction and stimulus through a reflection on arts-based methods used in a research study into post-industrial communities in South Wales and consider whether in participatory processes, a catalyst for artistic creativity could become construed as researcher-led control over the activities. Through an examination of the methods and outcomes…

Environmental planning disputes often combine questions of regulation and legislation with distinctive, place-based epistemic issues that lend themselves to citizen science approaches. Whilst these citizen science activities often concern the enforcement of regulations, here we describe the attempts of a local community group to prevent the start-up of a new biomass incineration plant by showing…