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.
In this episode, George Miller talks to the author of What are Prisons for?, prison inspector and visiting professor of law at Oxford Hindpal Singh Bhui, about why we lock so many people up.…Read more
Zach Roche, author of Thriving Beyond Debt, gives an insight into what the experience of bankruptcy and insolvency is like. No wonder it’s an option most people will not consider. …Read more
Hindpal Singh Bhui of HM Inspectorate of Prisons looks back at the politics of imprisonment, at the disproportionate numbers of minority ethnic prisoners, and the role prison played in replacing slavery as a means of controlling Black people.…Read more
Katie Schmuecker, Principal Policy Advisor at the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, calls on politicians to stop ignoring poverty, and to come up with a plan for reducing hardship – otherwise the grim records will keep on coming and storing up problems for the future. …Read more
Jennifer M. Piscopo and Julieta Suárez-Cao consider the effects of gender parity in Chile’s first constitutional convention and ask if women’s presence in elected office leads to policy outcomes that benefit women.…Read more
In this episode, Richard Kemp speaks with Anna Durnova about the weaponisation of truth, the important difference between being told you are safe and feeling you are safe and the need to bring the harnessing of emotions back to democracy.…Read more
Emma Moormann, Anna Smajdor and Daniela Cutas discuss epigenetics and ask, if environmental factors can influence our gene expression and cell functioning, who is responsible for protecting our health? …Read more
Maaike Matelski, author of 'Contested Civil Society in Myanmar', considers the Spring Revolution resistance movement in Myanmar, three years on from the military coup.…Read more
Anton McLean, author of 'Educational Collateral Damage', examines why socioeconomically disadvantaged pupils continue to get a poor deal.…Read more
Sam Illingworth, author of 'Poetry and Pedagogy in Higher Education', shows how poetry can play a pivotal role in shifting public discourse towards a common ground amid the other less palatable Ps of populism, polarisation and post-truth. …Read more