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.
Uta Bolt looks at essays written by 11-year-old girls in 1969 to see if their predictions for life at 25 affected their earning outcomes.…Read more
In this episode, Rebecca Megson-Smith speaks with Jen Shang, co-author of ‘Meaningful Philanthropy: The Person Behind the Giving’, about the high net worth and ultra-high net worth individuals behind philanthropic giving.…Read more
Zacharoula Kasseri calls for care-oriented advocacy to be promoted as an approach for healing substance addiction, rather than the neoliberal tendencies of medicalisation, criminalisation and the war on drugs ideology. …Read more
If the way we eat now is bad for our health, bad for animal welfare and bad for the planet, is veganism the answer? Catherine Oliver and George Miller discuss in our latest podcast.…Read more
Jules Boykoff, author of 'What Are the Olympics For?', reminds us of the dark side of the Olympics: more than 12,500 people have been forcibly displaced by authorities before the games.…Read more
A migrant, a Brit and a robot walk into a bar. Kostas Maronitis and Denny Pencheva, authors of 'Robots and Immigrants', discuss who will get the job. …Read more
Convict’s voices have traditionally been ignored and marginalised in scholarship and policy debates, but how can we improve if we don’t learn from these lived experiences? Richard Kemp speaks with Jeffrey Ian Ross, author of 'Introduction to Convict Criminology', about why listening to convicts is essential to positively impacting corrections, criminology, criminal justice, and policy making.…Read more
Catherine Needham considers what social care means in the UK and Australia. With elderly and disabled people more and more isolated, opportunities inaccessible and eligibility criteria increasingly exclusive, we need to rediscover the ‘social’ in social care.…Read more
Our children are growing up in a volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous world. Paul Lindley, author of 'Raising the Nation', explains why the next government needs to focus on providing for the UK's children.…Read more
On World Oceans Day, Ryan MacNeil discusses the crucial role that the public sector can play in ocean-saving technology. Such innovations must not be left purely to the private sector. …Read more