Publications

The COVID-19 pandemic has renewed the rural idyll, as urban-dwellers seek greener, safer spaces. If the counter-urban trend appears for novel reasons, it does so along lifestyle mobilities’ well-worn paths. These paths often depend upon spatial inequalities. Yet, despite awareness that inequalities undergird mobilities, spatial inequalities have remained under-theorized in the lifestyle mobilities literature. This…

Emerging in the mid-2010s, the Foundational Economy has been heralded as ‘a compelling counter-project against neoliberalism’ and ‘an alternative pathway … [for] progressive political renewal’. Grounded in a review of cross-disciplinary debates, this paper introduces the concept of the Foundational Economy and places it in relation to heterodox geographic theories of socio-economic development such as…

The globalization of agriculture is reconfiguring the geography of farming, with increasing concentration of commodity production in favourable regions recast as ‘global farmlands’. Such areas have become targets for investment by transnational agribusiness. In such localities, the influence of agribusiness can shape local political processes, land and labour markets, and processes of urban development. This…

Academics at the University of South Wales, affiliated to WISERD, have looked at how the pandemic has affected bus service levels across Wales. Their guest article details how the most deprived areas – where people most depend on bus services – have been hardest hit.

The 20th century saw the catastrophes of the First and Second World Wars. International intellectual cooperation was considered necessary if humanity were to renew civilized society and build a prosperous economy to the benefit of all. Such exchange also became an instrument of ideological “soft-power” or cultural diplomacy, using propaganda, and exploiting the arts, sciences,…

Civil Society Book Series Forthcoming 2022 Is transparency a necessary condition to build and restore citizen and civil society trust in governance and democracy? Throughout Europe there is a growing demand for effective forms of citizen engagement and decentralisation in policy making to increase trust and engage increasingly diverse populations. This volume addresses the relationship…

Read our annual report, WISERD Insight, featuring our key areas of activity, income profile, funding and engagement activities in 2021.

Sources Family information W. John Morgan, ‘Ben Bowen Thomas, Wales, and UNESCO‘, Lecture to the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion, 20th April 2021. An extended version is forthcoming in The Transactions of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion National Library of Wales Archives: Sir Ben Bowen Thomas Papers, 1926-1977, accessed 6 November 2020 UNESCO Archives, Paris, accessed 8 November…

Highlights •Living in an area where one’s group is in the minority is associated with poorer mental health. •Most commonly shown for ethnic groups, but evidence this also applies to social class. •We examined whether this was driven by economic or cultural aspects of class. •Group density association with mental health found for cultural but…

In the north-western corner of Tasmania lies the 22,000 hectare Woolnorth property, the largest dairy farm in the southern hemisphere. In 2016, Woolnorth was acquired by Moon Lake Investments, a company owned by a Chinese window-blind manufacturer with no prior experience of farming, for AUS$220m (US$170m). The sale was controversial, provoking outrage in the Australian…