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
Feeding Britain while preparing for the ravages of climate change are two key issues – yet there’s no strategy for managing and enhancing that most precious resource: our land. This book explores how the pressures of leaving the EU, recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic, and addressing global heating present unparalleled opportunities to re-work the countryside for the benefit of all.
Incorporating personal, inspiring stories of people and places, Peter Hetherington sets out the innovative measures needed for nature’s recovery while protecting our most valuable farmland, encouraging local food production and ‘re-peopling’ remote areas. In the first book to tackle these issues holistically, he argues that we need to re-shape the countryside with an adventurous new agenda at the heart of government.
While there is growing interest in participatory research to address issues around environmental sustainability, the focus of analysis tends to be on the results or products of the research rather than the processes involved. Addressing this gap, the authors draw on their experience of specific mapping techniques, based on different systemic concepts and theories, that have helped facilitate, explore and capture different understandings of the relationships, perspectives and boundaries within situations involving environmental sustainability.
The development of visual mapping techniques is explained and practical case studies describe their application in environmental sustainability projects, from working with farmers and their networks to using visual mapping with indigenous communities and managing coastal environments. Each case study provides a ‘real world’ project example from researchers with extensive experience of using these techniques to research different aspects of environmental sustainability over several decades.
The English planning system is in crisis, argue the authors of this provocative new book. Reflecting on controversial new Government reforms and deregulation, Kate Henderson and Hugh Ellis provide a comprehensive analysis of these reforms, assessing the implications and significance for the future.
They highlight why planning is so essential to quality of life and set out 10 evidence-based steps to rebuild the planning system in England. Drawing on policy and practice examples from across the UK and internationally, the book is a manifesto for change. It provides a direct and vigorous challenge to the current structure and policy of planning that should ignite a debate about the values that shape its future.
Africa’s urban population is growing rapidly, raising numerous environmental concerns. Urban areas are often linked to poverty as well as power and wealth, and hazardous and unhealthy environments as the pace of change stretches local resources. Yet there are a wide range of perspectives and possibilities for political analysis of these rapidly changing environments.
Written by a widely respected author, this important book will mark a major new step forward in the study of Africa’s urban environments. Using innovative research including fieldwork data, map analysis, place-name study, interviewing and fiction, the book explores environmentalism from a variety of perspectives, acknowledging the clash between Western planning mind-sets pursuing the goal of sustainable development, and the lived realities of residents of often poor, informal settlements. The book will be valuable to advanced undergraduate and graduate level courses in geography, urban studies, development studies, environmental studies and African studies.
