Blogs

A collaboration between academics, artists and NGOs, Art for a Better World uses visual arts to make research about global social challenges accessible to general audiences.  

Unpaid care is a social and political issue, and to some extent even a question of social justice. Since late 2022, Dan Taylor has been working on a UKRI-backed knowledge exchange project in Gateshead, a town in North-East England, to understand how unpaid caregivers can be better supported and enabled to thrive.

What is the future of UN peace operations and what new research approaches should scholars take to both understand and influence their evolution? These were the central questions academics explored during a two-day international conference entitled Multidisciplinary futures of United Nations peace operations on 20 and 21 February 2023.

The majority of migrant health care workers across the world are women. Many migrant workers leave their own families behind in order to deliver vital care to others abroad. They provide invaluable services to our health systems, yet they are invisible in terms of rights.

In July 2022, the Welsh Government launched the basic income pilot for people leaving care in Wales. This pilot will add to debates about a universal basic income. A universal basic income is an old idea and can be traced back at least to works such as Thomas More’s Utopia published around 500 years ago.

Sexual misconduct at the core of Britain’s political establishment is the focus of a new book on Sexual Harassment in the UK Parliament, which draws on an intersectional feminist perspective and academic literature on Violence Against Women in Politics (VAWP) to examine the plight of female victims of sexual transgressions in Westminster.

Over the last three years the Moving MarketPlaces (MMP) project has been investigating how market traders in England produce inclusive public spaces. The team at The Open University organised a public exhibition at Walthamstow Market with two street photographers, Lourice Ramos and Lloyd Ramos.

Processes of citizenship are linked to the norms and patterns of social order, as discussed by Catherine Neveu. It may be productive to reframe issues in terms of processes and practices of ordering.

Looking at citizenship as a ‘living’ practice can show us how citizens themselves construct the concept of citizenship and how they negotiate, contest, claim and enact their positions as rights bearers vis-à-vis others.

Why do some developing economies have gender gaps in the movement of labour from agriculture to non-agricultural sectors? Looking at India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Turkey, Egypt and Morocco, a research network aims to find answers.