Research projects

Foundational economy, citizenship and new forms of common ownership explores place-based solutions and experiments with social mechanisms and new institutional forms that provide the material basis for citizenship. It looks at how Foundational Economy approaches can promote civic gain and address contemporary social and economic policy concerns at regional and local levels, focusing on food,…

Borders, boundary mechanisms and migration examines factors shaping civil society engagement with migration and forms of bordering through comparative international case studies and place-based ethnographies, and explores how social boundary activation mechanisms are articulated by civil society groups. Start date provided is that of the WISERD Civil Society Centre. Work packages will have their own…

Led by Professor Paul Chaney, this international project links with Professor Nasir Uddin of the University of Chittagong, a leading international scholar on the Rohingyas. This new collaboration aligns with the Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) call for new research on promoting human rights, good governance and social justice. By focusing on the recurrent Rohingya…

This project examines the benefits of volunteering for the political engagement of young people in the UK. Voting is the single most common and important form of political participation in a democracy, and yet today’s young voters have an unprecedented reluctance to turn up at the ballot box. What’s more is that this decline of…

The WISERD Politics and Governance Research Network is a multidisciplinary network which brings together scholars who conduct and publish research that centres on Welsh politics and governance, from across the five WISERD partner universities. The Network is jointly led by Dr Matthew Wall and Dr Bettina Petersohn from Swansea University’s Department of Political and Cultural Studies. Network…

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…

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…

This project utilises routinely available linked administrative data to examine the effectiveness of the services provided by Careers Wales for the sustained progression of young people through education and into employment or further training/education. The research also explores how the use of administrative data can contribute to the effective follow-up of clients for Careers Wales…

The research context is the post-1945 Cultural Cold War. There is a considerable literature on the USA and its agencies, such as the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA); and to a lesser extent on the Soviet Union and agencies such as the Communist Information Bureau (Cominform). The use of the United Nations and UNESCO in this…

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…

This project, facilitated through WISERD and the Ecole Normale Superieure, Lyon, is exploring the contrasting relationship between education, the state and civil society in Wales and France. France and the UK provide two important contexts in which to explore these issues as the relationship between the state, the education system and civil society is very…

How are young people responding to Brexit, and how does it affect their political engagement? Young People & Brexit is an interdisciplinary study of how young people in the UK feel about and are responding to the most significant policy issue of this Parliament: the UK’s exit from the European Union. Drawing on both existing…

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 This work package will explore the importance of ageing and intergenerational relations for social participation and civil society.  In particular, we will investigate the impact of ageing on participation in civil society through the lens of crime across the life course and the extent to which this, and the fear of crime, influence the…

Overview This project utilised a mixed methods approach, combining a strategic review of existing survey data with ethnographic observation and interviews to make a timely and original contribution to understanding the benefits of ‘serious leisure’ in retirement for the individual and for the wider communities of which they are part.   In order to address the stipulated…

Overview This project will explore how imaginaries and practices of local civil society have been stretched and reconfigured by global interconnectivities, including both the reorientation of local civil society activities around global issues and concerns, and participation in local civil society by individuals outside the locality, for instance through social media. The research will focus…

This project has three components. The first two combine archive work, case studies and interviews to investigate how the territorial administration of the third sector in Wales has changed over the post-war period in response to shifting patterns and processes of governance – and how this has affected the way third sector organizations shape and…

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…

This project is a study of young people’s attitudes towards and engagement with the EU referendum campaign. Using data from a dedicated UK-wide survey of under 30s and a wide range of publicly available data and academic research we will address four key themes. These are examining the likelihood to vote among young people and…