Research
You will find a complete range of our peer-reviewed monographs, multi-authored and edited works, including original scholarly research across the social sciences and aligned disciplines. We publish long and short form research and you can browse the Bristol University Press and Policy Press archive.
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 98 items for :
- Type: Book x
- Science, Technology and Society x
- Access: All content x
Available open access digitally under CC-BY-NC-ND licence.
In a world where artificial intelligence increasingly influences the fabric of our daily lives, this accessible book offers a critical examination of AI and its deep entanglement with power structures. Rather than focusing on doomsday scenarios, it emphasizes how AI impacts our everyday interactions and social norms in ways that fundamentally reshape society. By examining the different forms of exploitation and manipulation in the relationship between humans and AI, the book advocates for collective responsibility, better regulation and systemic change.
This is a resounding manifesto for rethinking AI ethics through a power-aware lens. With detailed analysis of real-world examples and technological insights, it is an essential reading for anyone invested in the future of AI policy, scholarly critique and societal integration.
Available open access digitally under CC-BY-NC-ND licence.
Studies of surveillance have emphasised how technology is used to control space. This innovative collection examines how new monitoring technologies are also affecting the experience of time.
Drawing on Henri Lefebvre’s concept of rhythm, the book brings together ethnographic research from Europe, China and the US, to show how digital monitoring is transforming spatio-temporal relations across the Global North.
As digital technologies continue to reshape the rhythms of life, this book makes a valuable contribution to both anthropology and surveillance studies.
Available open access digitally under CC-BY-NC-ND licence.
The realities of autonomous weapons are a complex blend of both existing military technologies and visions of their future capabilities. The expected ramifications are profound and always point to the interplay between fact and fiction, actual developments and creative imagination.
This book explores how these realities shape and become themselves shaped by popular culture, regulatory and ethics debates, military doctrines, policies and research. It analyses phenomena ranging from film and artistic interpretations to warfare scenarios and weaponised artificial intelligence.
Intended for researchers (including the disciplines of political and social sciences, media, culture and technology), policy-makers, educators and journalists, this is a key resource that uncovers how autonomous weapons are constructed as both a technological reality and a futuristic possibility.
Available open access digitally under CC-BY-NC-ND licence.
Bad policies have repercussions that can be felt for decades. But what makes a bad policy? And how can it be reversed or improved?
Bringing together scholars from Europe and North America, this book goes beyond traditional policy theory to study bad and ineffective policies across three fields:
• the environment;
• the financial services sector; and
• emerging technologies.
Using cutting-edge research and analysis, the editors and authors state the case for studying ineffective policies, demonstrate their harmful effects across policy fields and provide policy makers with the tools to reflect, identify, and act upon them.
In today’s digital world, platforms are everywhere, shaping our social and cultural landscapes. This groundbreaking book shows how platforms are not just technical systems, but complex networks involving diverse people, practices and values. It explores a wide range of digital platforms, using insights from science and technology studies, anthropology, sociology and cultural theories to offer fresh perspectives on how platforms, media and devices function and evolve.
Blending ethnographic work with technical analysis, this is essential reading for anyone wanting a deeper understanding of the digital age.
Digital PES-in-Action offers a comprehensive exploration of the ongoing digital transformation of public employment services (PES) – the most radical remaking of the welfare state in a generation.
As PES shifts from analogue to fully digitised services, this volume bridges the gap between technology, policy and frontline service provision. It provides a well-rounded analysis of the practical opportunities and challenges posed by digital welfare, reconnecting and reconciling technical possibilities and political ambitions with what is socially necessary as welfare systems undergo radical change.
Available open access digitally under CC-BY licence.
Pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) is a drug taken by HIV-negative people that reduces the risk of getting HIV. Comparing two case studies in Denmark and Zimbabwe, this book demonstrates six paradoxes that users often encounter in navigating their PrEP journey. The paradoxes lead to contentions, uncertainties, dilemmas and ambiguities that need to be carefully and pensively responded to through what the author terms ‘everyday PrEP negotiations’.
The social nature and need for such everyday PrEP negotiations help explain why PrEP works for some people and not for others. This book argues that such insight is critical to make PrEP work for more people and to inform social public health responses.
Democratic planning allows us to effectively address the multiple crises of our time through cooperative modes of collective coordination. Given the destructive consequences of contemporary capitalism, such a structural alternative to market economies is needed more than ever.
This accessible work examines various approaches that theorise, practise and nurture a creative construction towards varieties of democratic planning. Drawing from current socio-economic and ecological movements, it explores what future non-capitalist democratic planning could look like.
Bringing together important voices in the ongoing debates from scholars to activists, this volume proposes an interdisciplinary and innovative approach to democratic planning in the 21st century and beyond.
With over five billion internet users globally, it is crucial to understand social media activism and legal change for women and girls.
This insightful book examines the impact of international Twitter (now X) campaigns on domestic laws affecting women and girls. Exploring the complexities of legal change for women and girls across seven countries from Latin America to Middle East and Africa, the book offers empirical insights into the effectiveness of hashtag advocacy and sheds light on the role of social media in shaping different outcomes.
This is a key resource for understanding the dynamics driving social media activism and its potential impact on the rights of women and girls worldwide.
Dementia is one of the greatest challenges facing humanity in the 21st century. Responding to the global dementia challenge, however, affects more than humans alone. We live in a multi-species world but often think about dementia in mono-species ways. From the lab to the living room, other beings are “on the scene” and our relations with them affect how we understand, experience, and respond to dementia. Drawing on cutting-edge work across the social and biological sciences, this book offers readers the tools to respond to dementia in multi-species ways. By exploring a range of topics, from pathology to personhood, contributors highlight how thinking about dementia as a more-than-human phenomenon may enable new ways of responding to our global dementia challenge.
