Publications

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 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…

Russia’s war against Ukraine, beginning in 2014 and intensifying in 2022, has stimulated much journalistic commentary, well-informed and ill-informed, on Eastern Europe since the end of the Soviet Union, considered by Putin a geopolitical catastrophe for the Russky Mir (Russian World). This perspective is encouraged by the quasi-philosophy of Alexander Dugin that has similarities with…

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…

Basque settlement increased in the western states of the US decades ago, particularly in California, Idaho, and Nevada. Alongside this migration phenomenon, Basque Studies programs have been emerging at the University of Nevada, Reno (UNR), Boise State University (BSU), and California State University, Bakersfield (CSUB), particularly in the humanities, including history, anthropology, linguistics, and literature….

This chapter examines the challenges and opportunities for local civil society posed by digital technologies, especially social media. Drawing upon case studies of local civil society groups in three localities in Wales – Aberystwyth, Cardiff and Swansea – they explored the dynamics of reconfiguration of local civil society and how the new digital technologies have…

This chapter highlights turbulence and uncertainty in relation to contemporary patterns and processes of migration. This has been driven by a variety of causes including the international rise of populism and Brexit. Many EU citizens have been targeted in xenoracist incidents. A review of the academic and policy literature underlines how many accounts take an…

Here we make an original, empirical contribution to debates on welfare pluralism, the mixed economies of welfare and territorial rescaling by comparing civil society approaches to tackling youth unemployment in England, Scotland and Wales. Our core finding is that academic and policy literature’s frequent characterisation of the UK as a single Liberal welfare regime is…

This article argues that, since the COVID-19 outbreak, ‘digital diasporas’ worldwide may have been shaped through stringent postpandemic societal pressing patterns by increasingly further exposing diasporic citizens’ digital rights unwittingly towards unprecedented technopolitical risks. Against this backdrop, this article poses a novel term entitled ‘Hyperconnected Diasporas’ by suggesting (i) a technopolitical wake up call for…