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.
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
Three decades of neoliberal efficiency thinking about caring and care systems have resulted in a greater need for relationality in healthcare and social work than ever before. These support services extend beyond the giving of care and support to include the development of relationships between caregivers and their care recipients in their socio-institutional contexts.
The culmination of over 30 years of research, this book provides an extensive and critical introduction to relational working in care, education and welfare. It explains what relational work is and proposes a new, human-orientated theory beyond the simple needs provision model. Demonstrating the kind of professionalism required for such work, it explores why it is as important to be present with and for people, especially those in precarious conditions, as it is to give care.
This is essential reading for researchers, educators, quality officers, policy makers, students and practitioners interested in understanding the growing scholarship related to both care theory and presence theory.
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.
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.
As the population ages, this book reveals how divides that are apparent through childhood and working life change and are added to in later life.
Two internationally renowned experts in ageing look beyond longstanding factors like class, gender and ethnicity to explore new social divisions, including contrasting states of physical fitness and mental health. They show how differences in health and frailty are creating fresh inequalities in later life, with significant implications for the future of our ageing societies.
This accessible overview of social divisions is essential reading for those interested in the sociology of ageing and its differences, diversities and inequalities.
What risks and insecurities do older people face in a time of both increased longevity and widening inequality?
This edited collection develops an exciting new approach to understanding the changing cultural, economic and social circumstances facing different groups of older people. Exploring a range of topics, the chapters provide a critical review of the concept of precarity, highlighting the experiences of ageing that occur within the context of societal changes tied to declining social protection. Drawing together insights from leading voices across a range of disciplines, the book underscores the pressing need to address inequality across the life course and into later life.
