Global social challenges
There are multiple interlocking crises currently gripping the planet. Significant threats and dangers lie ahead of us, but so do opportunities, as new ways of being, thinking, and doing emerge.
This stream of Transforming Society is a space for exploring the complexities of the global social challenges across disciplines and fields. It seeks to build and share the knowledge needed to shape a fairer world, across and for the global south and north, hoping to foster dialogue between academics, practitioners, policy makers and the wider public.
Tristan Partridge and Javiera Barandi remind us that systems that renewable energy will replace do not neatly come to an end. Energy transitions must be built around decommissioning frameworks. …Read more
Helen Penn discusses how far we’ve come away from the community nurseries of the 1980s: a local accountable service for local people. Now it’s big business and the children are not the beneficiaries.…Read more
The era of climate boiling – the Pyrocene – is upon us. Extreme heat and wildfire events are both widespread and regular. Celia Roberts, Mary Lou Rasmussen, Louisa Allen and Rebecca Williamson propose the term Pyro-reproduction to explore the ways in which people forge ways of life in such conditions. …Read more
Bozena Wielgoszewska reports her findings on why the pandemic affected women’s employment rates more adversely than men’s. …Read more
Scott Timcke, author of 'Algorithms and the End of Politics', looks at the dangers of attributing human-like intelligence to machines in the context of the rollout of AI products. …Read more
In this episode of the Transforming Society podcast, Jess Miles speaks with Malcolm Evans, former Chair of the UN Subcommittee on the Prevention of Torture and author of ‘Tackling Torture: Prevention in Practice’.…Read more
Hannes Gerhardt, author of 'From Capital to Commons', considers what an alternative, commons approach to our electricity provision could look like. …Read more
David C. Lane and Kristen M. Budd, co-editors of 'Beyond Bars', consider what has led to the dire state of mass incarceration in the US. …Read more
Gerry Mitchell and Marcos González Hernando, authors of ‘Uncomfortably Off', explain why it's time for higher earners to reset their attitudes towards social inequality.…Read more
Amy Beddows considers how society shifts criticism and responsibility away from systemic failings and onto the individuals it is failing to safeguard. …Read more