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.
Luke Cooper, author of 'Authoritarian Contagion', traces the rise and fall of neoliberalism as a popular ideology, to be replaced in many countries by a nationalistic ‘authoritarian protectionism’ – a claim to protection no longer based on merit, but on membership of the in-group.…Read more
The need to care for all citizens regardless of background is ever more critical. Bristol University Press Chief Executive Alison Shaw marks 25 years of publishing for social change.…Read more
Baltica Cabieses, Professor of Social Epidemiology, Universidad del Desarrollo Chile and Visiting Lecturer in the Department of Health at the University of York, talks to Publisher Philippa Grand about her dual experience as a researcher in both North and South contexts and how we can start to address inequalities in knowledge production.…Read more
Launching their new book ‘The Reformation of Welfare: The New Faith of the Labour Market’, Tom Boland and Ray Griffin chart the long history of attempts to reform the unemployed rather than simply investing in jobs for them. …Read more
Clare Bambra, Julia Lynch and Katherine E Smith dispel the myth that COVID-19 is an equality of opportunity disease. They outline how it kills unequally, is experienced unequally and impoverishes unequally... and that this inequality could have been avoided. …Read more
Sven Biscop, author of 'Grand Strategy in 10 Words: A Guide to Great Power Politics in the 21st Century' discusses the difference between competition and rivalry in international politics, and where the EU and US should set the red line in China and Russia’s pursuit for power.…Read more
Tim Dixon and Mark Tewdwr-Jones explain how crucial it is for cities to reimagine how people will want to live, work and play in urban environments in 2040 and beyond.…Read more
In this episode, Jess Miles speaks with Natasha Lindstaedt, author of 'Democratic Decay and Authoritarian Resurgence', about what has caused this breakdown of democracy, the impact COVID-19 is likely to have on a global scale and ways we can try and curb the threats to remaining democratic systems.…Read more
Launching their new book ‘Sex and Diversity in Later Life’, Paul Simpson, Paul Reynolds and Trish Hafford-Letchfield reject the dominant notions of ageing that portray it as an experience of loss, and the denial that those over 50 are valid sexual beings. …Read more
Acclaimed activist and scholar Gill Hague talks with Jess Miles about the inspiring and powerful story of the women’s liberation movement and the domestic violence movement in particular, as told in her book, 'History and Memories of the Domestic Violence Movement: We’ve Come Further Than You Think'.…Read more