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.
Ghana’s policy decisions during the first year of the COVID pandemic were influenced by it being an election year. Kirchuffs Atengble and Michael Head call for a better awareness of evidence-informed decision making (EIDM) that will help decision makers to prioritise the general good over interests of the self. …Read more
Inviting youth engagement groups to summits such as the G7 is tokenistic if these groups are excluded from high-level decision-making or if their insights and lived experiences are not valued. Safia Sangster speaks on the pressing need for global leadership to make decisions that reflect the diversity of the global population. …Read more
In this episode, Richard Kemp speaks with Dan McQuillan about what artificial intelligence really is. They discuss how artificial intelligence damages society in ways that are not easily fixed and why it needs to be restructured from the ground up, as well as how these fundamental changes to AI can help create a better society for everyone.…Read more
The study of the global political economy is the understanding of recurrent and periodic crises and is now perhaps more important as a discipline than ever. Phoebe Moore and Mònica Clua-Losada launch our newest journal, Global Political Economy and explain its relevance and raison d’être.…Read more
Gary Craig, co-editor of The Modern Slavery Agenda, looks at how Mo Farah revealing his story now has raised public consciousness about slavery.…Read more
Launching their book ‘Social Work with the Black African Diaspora’, Paul Michael Garrett and Washington Marovatsanga call for more expansive and less Eurocentric ways of perceiving the social work task.…Read more
In the latest episode of the Transforming Society podcast we speak to author Stephen McBride about radical solutions to global issues such as economic catastrophes, inequality, climate change and political failure. Are there means of escape from the near dystopia we find ourselves in?…Read more
The joint effort between Policy Press and the British Society for Gerontology (BSG) has pioneered research in topics studying the impact of globalisation on the study of ageing, intimacy in later life, precarity and connecting digitalisation to trends in ageing. Tom Scharf celebrates the partnership between Policy Press and BSG, a springboard for pushing forward into new areas of research and action for positive change. …Read more
Cybernetics provides lot of the tools needed to help individual coops bring about effective democratic and non-hierarchical regulation. It shows us how we can collectively manage change in the face of adversity and develop the solutions we need. Thomas Swann looks at the history of the coop movement and ask whether cybernetic cooperatives could be the future of work.…Read more
Fran Amery discusses the impact of the decision to overturn Roe v. Wade on access to abortion and how the work done by grassroots organisations like AidAccess and Women on Web will have a vital role to play moving forward.…Read more