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
Taking a unique and critical approach to the study of Public Law, this book explores the main topics in UK Public Law from a range of underexplored perspectives and amplifies the voices of scholars who are underrepresented in the field. As such, it represents a much-needed complement to traditional textbooks in Public Law.
Including insights from a diverse list of contributors, the book:
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Enriches students’ understanding of the dynamics that emerge within public law;
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Highlights the impact of historical and societal inequities on public law norms;
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Demonstrates the ways in which those norms may impact minorities and perpetuate inequalities.
With most chapters written by underrepresented or minoritised persons in the field, this text offers students a critical, rich, and insightful approach to public law.
Slaves, mistresses, concubines – the English courts have used these terms to describe polygamous wives in the past, but are they still seen this way today?
Using a critical postcolonial feminist lens, this book provides a contextualised exploration of English legal responses to polygamy. Through the legacies of British imperialism, the book shows how attitudes to polygamy are shaped by indifference and hostility towards its participants. This goes beyond the law, as shown by the stories of women shared throughout the book negotiating their identities and relationships in the UK today.
Through its analysis, the book demonstrates how polygamy and polygamous wives are subjected to imperialist and orientalist discourses which dehumanise them for practising a relationship that has existed for millennia.
At a time of rising populism and debate about immigration, leading legal academic Jo Shaw sets out to review interactions between constitutions and constructs of citizenship.
This incisive appraisal is the first sustained treatment of the relationship between citizenship and constitutional law in a comparative and transnational perspective.
Drawing on examples from around the world, it assesses how countries’ legal, political and cultural processes help to determine the boundaries of citizenship.
For students and academics across political, social and international disciplines, Shaw offers an accessible response to some of the most pressing international questions of our age.
Available Open Access under CC-BY-NC licence. Exploring how justice is delivered at a time of rapid technological transformation, Justice in the Digital State exposes urgent issues surrounding the modernisation of courts and tribunals whilst examining the effects of technology on established systems. Case studies investigate the rise of crowdfunded judicial reviews, the digitalisation of tribunals and the rise of ‘agile’ methodologies in building administrative justice systems. Joe Tomlinson’s cutting-edge research offers an authoritative and much-needed guide for navigating through the challenges of digital disruption.
Available Open Access under CC-BY-NC licence.
In a world dominated by austerity politics and policies, Advising in austerity provides a lively and thought-provoking account of the conditions, consequences and challenges of advice work in the UK, presenting a rare and rich view of the world of advice giving. Based on original research it examines how advisors negotiate the private troubles of those who come to Citizens Advice Bureaux (CAB) and construct ways forward. Exploring how advisors are trained, the strong contributor team reflect on the challenges facing Citizens Advice Bureaux in the future, where austerity will ensure that the need for advice services increase, while funding for such services declines.
