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.
Hendrik Wagenaar and Barbara Prainsack profile their new book ‘The Pandemic Within’. COVID-19 has exposed fault lines in our economic, social and political order. Here are tools to imagine solutions to the crisis. …Read more
On the International Day of Older Persons, Bethany Simmonds, author of 'Ageing and the Crisis in Health and Social Care', charts the discriminatory attitude towards older people revealed in government policy and rhetoric throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. …Read more
Ahead of COP26, Senior Commissioning Editor Emily Watt recommends some of Bristol University Press’s recent books from the growing climate change list. …Read more
Catherine Turner champions mediation as a tool for making the world more equal, inclusive and sustainable in the pandemic recovery, by involving the marginalised in decision making on security, development or climate change issues. …Read more
How do people navigate the tensions of an increasingly divided British society? In this episode of the Transforming Society podcast, Jess Miles talks about issues around racism, resilience and identity raised in 'This Separated Isle', with editor Paul Sng, Kristie De Garis, whose portrait and story appears in the book, and photographer Amara Eno.…Read more
Caroline McGregor and Pat Dolan consider the dichotomy of social work being both a force for change as well as being complicit in reinforcing social, health and economic inequalities.…Read more
After five years of building the Bristol University Press brand, Victoria Pittman, Head of Commissioning, talks about the global expansion we have achieved. …Read more
The Future We Dream is a collaborative arts-based project by Maya communities from Belize, a response to orthodox academic models of research which, although well intentioned, so often scrutinise and stigmatise indigenous communities, and focus on what they lack.…Read more
Sondra Barringer, Erin Leahey, Misty Ring-Ramirez and Karina Salazar outline the results of their study into how committed US universities really are to interdisciplinary research. …Read more
Tamantha Stutchbury and Sharon Robinson profile the University of Wollongong’s Global Challenges Program, a relatively new way of bringing together the disciplinary expertise needed to solve complex problems.…Read more