Research projects

This is a project that is being undertaken by colleagues in Cardiff Business School and WISERD in collaboration with the Clean Clothes Campaign (CCC). It built on an earlier ESRC IAA Award which was completed in March 2019. The focus of our work is to improve and develop the database used by CCC to record and…

This is an international research project funded by the ESRC under the remit of the Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF). It is a collaboration between researchers at Cardiff Business School and WISERD and our partners at Cividep-India. The research is distinctive in being a longitudinal, workplace-centred study of access to remedy at the grass roots…

WISERD researchers, Melanie Jones and Esgi Kaya have evaluated the size of the gender pay gap within UK public sector occupations such as teaching and nursing after they successfully secured a research grant from the Office of Manpower Economics (OME). The research has informed the work of the independent public sector pay review bodies. They used large…

This multidisciplinary research network project is jointly hosted by WISERD and the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Delhi. It is funded under a Global Challenge Research Fund award from the Academy of Medical Sciences. The Principal Investigators are Professor Paul Chaney (WISERD, Cardiff) and Dr Sarbeswar Sahoo (IIT, Delhi) – in collaboration with Dr Seuty Sabur…

Centre for Welsh Politics and Society / WISERD@Aberystwyth researchers are involved in a European study to investigate interactions between rural and urban areas and how they can be more effectively managed. ROBUST is a European research project involving 24 partners from 11 countries. It is coordinated by Wageningen University in the Netherlands. The project receives funding from the…

The IMAJINE project (Integrative Mechanisms for Addressing Spatial Justice and Territorial Inequalities in Europe) is one of the largest social sciences projects to be financed as part of the EU’s Horizon 2020 programme. The five-year project aims to come up with new policy approaches for tackling inequality and promoting a fairer distribution of resources across the EU….

Overview The Skills and Employment Survey (2017) collects data on what people do at work, what skills they use and how they work. The 2017 survey is the seventh in a series of studies which began in 1986. A total of 3,306 workers took part in the latest survey. These cross-sectional surveys provide the means…

Overview This project utilised a mixed-methods design incorporating interviews, focus groups, a scoping analysis of secondary quantitative data and a cross-national survey to explore the role of trust and transparency within the context of multi-level governance. The core research question focused on the extent to which a pan-European convergence in norms of trust has emerged and its…

Overview This project utilised a range of econometric techniques to investigate the nature of the relationship between the domains of individual subjective wellbeing, individual and household characteristics, work/life circumstances, and a range of indicators related to the measurement of social cohesion and civil society. The main UK data sets used by the WP included: Understanding…

Overview This project combined quantitative and qualitative research methodologies to examine the participation of European migrants from the A8 countries in local civil society. Fieldwork took place in three localities across Wales; one urban, one rural and one semi-rural. The project employed a mixed-methods approach. The research was conducted in two stages. The team will conduct 80 hour long…

The Welsh Housing Research Network brings together researchers and research organisations in Wales in the field of housing. Researchers are exploring housing issues via a multitude of disciplines ranging from the social sciences and economics to architecture and health. Moreover, network members are drawn from academia, government, the voluntary sector and the private sector. This…

Overview This project was aimed at improving the linkages between research evidence and policy development in Wales (and elsewhere). It was based on a partnership between WISERD and the Welsh Government (WG); and involved the development of four Evidence Symposia, each of which focused on a key policy theme. Each Symposium brought together leading researchers…

In 2010 the UK coalition Government committed itself to an active policy of fiscal consolidation designed to ‘eliminate’ the structural deficit by the end of the current parliament (HM Budget, March 2011). As part of their consolidation plans the Government announced its intention to promote a rebalancing of the UK economy, away from public sector…

The UK gender Pay gap 1998-2013: What is the role of the public sector? The Quarterly Labour Force Survey was used to compare gender wage gap in the public and private sectors between 1998 and 2013 and to identify the contribution of the sectoral employment allocation to the overall gender pay gap. The study covered…

Pay determination and outcomes in the public sector Data from the Labour Force Survey was used to investigate public sector wage differential in the UK 1994 to 2012. In the first of a set of analyses, three separate sub-periods are considered in detail, each characterise broadly different government policy stances towards the public sector and different…

The project aimed to highlight the potential value of an important but currently underutilised dataset, the Welsh Local Labour Force Survey (WLLFS). The main aim was to provide new evidence relating to labour market transitions in Wales. In terms of the analysis we propose two separate pieces of research that both use the WLLFS to examine ‘at…

Overview In partnership with Old Bell 3 Ltd and IFF Research, WISERD undertook a survey of ERDF assisted businesses under the Convergence and Competitiveness Programmes for WEFO. The survey findings supplement existing Programme monitoring data to assess the effectiveness of the ERDF Enterprise, Business Finance, and R&D and Innovation Priorities. The survey also provided useful information to WEFO…

Overview As a part of the development process for the Connected Communities programme, the AHRC supported research reviews in 2011 to address a wide range of underpinning issues. The aim of these reviews was to: stimulate debate and provide some early outputs from the programme; inform future discussions about its shape, focus and priorities; and…

Overview This project was concerned with the impact on workers, their families and neighbourhoods of the closure of the Anglesey Aluminium (AA) smelter in September 2009, formerly one of the major employers in the Holyhead area. Previous studies of the impact of factory closure on local communities have focused on the individual impacts of redundancy as…