Research

 

You will find a complete range of our monographs, muti-authored and edited works including peer-reviewed, original scholarly research across the social sciences and aligned disciplines. We publish long and short form research and you can browse the complete Bristol University Press and Policy Press archive of over 1,500 titles.

Policy Press also publishes policy reviews and polemic work which aim to challenge policy and practice in certain fields. These books have a practitioner in mind and are practical, accessible in style, as well as being academically sound and referenced.
 

Books: Research

You are looking at 1 - 10 of 12 items for :

  • Participation and Inclusion x
  • Access: All content x
Clear All Modify Search

Available Open Access digitally under CC-BY-NC-ND licence.

This book examines the idea and practice of co-creation in public services. Informed by practical action, lived experience and research from 10 countries across Europe, including the UK, it shines new light on the theory and reality of co-creation by conceptualising it in terms of human rights, social justice and social innovation.

Focusing on human dimensions, the book presents real life examples in public services as diverse as social care, health, work activation, housing and criminal justice. It also highlights the ways digital technologies can accelerate or hinder co-creation.

The book confronts a paradox at the heart of co-creation: standardisation and inflexibility in planning and resourcing, or ‘concrete-ness’, counters the ‘elasticity’ required to sustain co-creation in complex contexts.

Open access
Educational Stratification, Meritocracy and Widening Participation

Despite the high aspirations of young people from disadvantaged communities, they face barriers that are frustrating the realisation of their educational ambitions.

This book analyses the ‘left-behind’ phenomenon and shows how education has become the new divide in Western society. It explains how denied educational equality and frustrated opportunity are undermining social cohesion and what we can do about it. It challenges meritocratic thinking and the efficacy of widening participation as a policy for social inclusion.

Combining analysis of educational disadvantage at an international level and among Travelling communities with empirical data derived from fieldwork with parents, teachers and students in the European Union (Ireland), this book offers fresh thinking and new hope in relation to young people left behind in the opportunity structure.

Restricted access
Innovation, Decolonisation, and Transformation

Conversations around diversity, equity and inclusion in science communication are in danger of generating much concern without effecting change and systematic transformations.

This radical volume addresses these circular discourses and reveals the gaps in the field. Putting the spotlight on the marginalized voices of so-called 'racialized minorities', and those from Global South regions, it interrogates the global footprint of the science communication enterprise.

Moving beyond tokenistic and extractive approaches, this book creates a space for academics and practitioners to challenge issues around race and sociocultural inclusion, providing mutual learning, paradigm-shifting perspectives and innovative ways forward for the science communication advancement agenda.

Restricted access
Knowledge, Care, Legitimacy
Author:

The past three decades have seen an international ‘turn to participation’ – letting those who will be affected by neighbourhood planning outcomes play an active role in decision-making – but there is widespread dissatisfaction with actual instances of citizen-state engagement.

This innovative analysis brings theory, research and practice together and gives insights into how and why citizen voices either become effective or get excluded. Using ethnographic data to illustrate a wide range of participatory and localist governance practices and social movements, the book concludes with recommendations to re-invigorate community involvement in planning.

Restricted access
Representations, Theory, and Practice

A book on queer themes and science communication is timely, if not well overdue.

LGBTIQA+ people have unique contributions to make and issues to meet through science communication. So, bringing ‘queer’ and ‘science communication’ together is an important step for queer protest, liberation, and visibility.

This collection examines the place of queer people within science communication and asks what it means for the field to ‘queer’ science communication practice, theory and research agendas.

Written by leading names in the field, it offers concrete examples for academics, students and practitioners who strive to foster radical inclusivity and equity in science communication.

Restricted access

Young people are often at the forefront of democratic activism, whether self-organised or supported by youth workers and community development professionals. Focusing on youth activism for greater equality, liberty and mutual care – radical democracy – this timely collection explores the movement’s impacts on community organisations and workers. Essays from the Global North and Global South cover the Black Lives Matter movement, environmental activism and the struggles of refugees.

At a time of huge global challenges, youth participation is a dynamic lens through which all community development scholars and participants can rethink their approaches.

Restricted access
Designing, Developing and Sustaining Later Lifestyles
Author:

Many developed nations face the challenge of accommodating a growing, ageing population and creating appropriate forms of housing suitable for older people.

Written by an architect, this practice-led ethnography of retirement housing offers new perspectives on environmental gerontology. Through stories and visual vignettes, it presents a range of stakeholders involved in the design, construction, management and habitation of third-age housing in the UK, to highlight the importance of design decisions for the everyday lives of older people.

Drawing on unique and interdisciplinary research methods, its fresh approach shows researchers how well-designed retirement housing can enable older people to successfully age in place for longer, and challenges designers, developers and providers to evolve their design practices and products.

Restricted access
Voices of Lived Experience of Poverty During COVID-19

How would your experience of the COVID-19 pandemic have been different if you had no access to the internet?

The APLE Collective - a group seeking to eradicate poverty – rooted their pandemic activism in expertise held by those with lived experience of poverty. This resulted in the decision to campaign against the exclusively digital response to the crisis and the alienation of people in poverty.

Drawing on case studies from Thrive Teeside, ATD Fourth World and Expert Citizens (APLE Collective organisations), this book interrogates the term ‘lived experience’. It critically investigates how knowledge gained from lived experiences of poverty is integral to developing effective COVID-19 policy responses.

Restricted access
Volume 2: Co-production Methods and Working Together at a Distance

EPDF and EPUB available Open Access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence. Groups most severely affected by COVID-19 have tended to be those marginalised before the pandemic and are now being largely ignored in developing responses to it.

This two-volume set of Rapid Responses explores the urgent need to put co-production and participatory approaches at the heart of responses to the pandemic and demonstrates how policymakers, health and social care practitioners, patients, service users, carers and public contributors can make this happen.

The second volume focuses on methods and means of co-producing during a pandemic. It explores a variety of case studies from across the global North and South and addresses the practical considerations of co-producing knowledge both now - at a distance - and in the future when the pandemic is over.

Open access
Volume 1: The Challenges and Necessity of Co-production

EPDF and EPUB available Open Access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence. Groups most severely affected by COVID-19 have tended to be those marginalised before the pandemic and are now largely being ignored in developing responses to it.

This two-volume set of Rapid Responses explores the urgent need to put co-production and participatory approaches at the heart of responses to the pandemic and demonstrates how policymakers, health and social care practitioners, patients, service users, carers and public contributors can make this happen.

The first volume investigates how, at the outset of the pandemic, the limits of existing structures severely undermined the potential of co-production. It also gives voice to a diversity of marginalised communities to illustrate how they have been affected and to demonstrate why co-produced responses are so important both now during this pandemic and in the future.

Open access