Study title

A series of interviews were conducted with participants in local organizations and stakeholders in three localities that are engaged with global issues. Issues include refugees and asylum seekers; the environment, including climate change and anti-plastic campaigning; and food, including food banks and food waste. The three localities are Aberystwyth, Mumbles (Swansea) and Splott (Cardiff). The resource also includes transcripts of interviews with stakeholders in these places. This project explored how imaginaries and practices of local civil society have been stretched and reconfigured by global interconnectivities, including both the reorientation of local civil society activities around global issues and concerns, and participation in local civil society by individuals outside the locality, for instance through social media. This proposal is for a National Research Centre (WISERD/Civil Society) to undertake a five year programme of policy relevant research addressing Civil Society in Wales. Established in 2008, WISERD provides an 'All-Wales' focus for research and has had a major impact on the quantity and quality of social science research undertaken in Wales. As part of WISERD, WISERD/Civil Society will enable this work to be deepened and sustained through a focused research programme that further develops our research expertise, intensifies our policy impact and knowledge exchange work and strengthens our research capacity and career development activities. WISERD/Civil Society will therefore aim to develop key aspects of the multidisciplinary research initiated during the first phase of WISERD's work to produce new empirical evidence to inform our understanding of the changing nature of civil society in the context of devolved government and processes of profound social and economic change. There are many disagreements over what civil society is and how it may be changing. We do know that over the last forty years there have been unprecedented changes in...