Impact

Happy Open Access Week! At Bristol University Press and our imprint Policy Press we have long been supporters of responsible and fair Open Access (OA). We are proud of our positive relationship with the academic community we serve, and we want our authors’ work to gain as wide a readership as possible. OA fundamentally supports Read More

Research having an impact on policy, and the wider world, can be extremely hard to quantify, but on occasion we find an example that illustrates the great potential we have to make a difference. …Read more

Of the nineteen UK governments since the Second World War, only two have torn up the rule book and tried to build a better future, instead of simply recycling the tired slogans and policies of the past. The two governments that did try radical change, not always successfully, were those of Clement Attlee in 1945 Read More

Based on Gangs, Drugs and (Dis)Organised Crime by Robert McLean, this briefing covers contemporary British gang activity at all levels with an emphasis on involvement in organised crime, and in particular the illegal supply of drugs. Policy recommendations include addressing the root causes of crime, adopting a strategy of support for members rather than gang Read More

What matters most in how poverty shapes children’s wellbeing and development? How can data inform social policy and approaches to improving outcomes for poorer children? What makes evidence useful? Young Lives has contributed powerful findings on the multiple impacts of poverty on the young. Using life course analysis from the Young Lives study of 12,000 Read More

It is just over ten years since the launch of the media story and storm about the death of a little boy who came to be called ‘Baby P’. He was killed in August 2007 but it was in November 2008 that his mother, her boyfriend and the boyfriend’s brother were each convicted of ‘causing Read More

It is that time of year again when we are out at conferences, meeting our authors, editors, readers and making new connections. At these events, we’re often asked about becoming Bristol University Press and where Policy Press now fits. When we launched Policy Press (PP) in 1996, our very first conference was the Social Policy Read More

Informal refugee camps in and around Calais may no longer be in the news but the problem is far from solved. In this impact case study, Sarah Mallet shows how her book, Lande: The Calais Jungle and Beyond, co-written with Dan Hicks, and the corresponding exhibition at the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford, create a Read More

Urban Food Sharing : Rules, tools and networks by Anna Davies is available Open Access under CC-BY-NC licence on OAPEN. In May 2019, The Guardian reported that a third of adults in the UK regularly eat alone; a figure which rises to almost half of all adults within London. This pattern of eating marks a Read More

How has the role of evidence in policy and practice changed in the last 20 years? Recent events such as Michael Gove’s claim that we have “had enough of experts” and the prevalence of fake news create a sense that decision makers apparently choose not to take academic research into account. But there is hope. Read More