On Thursday 16th November 2023, the Voluntary Sector Studies Network hosted an event to consider the way the Welsh and Northern Irish Voluntary Sectors are discussed and researched, and whether that differed in comparison to the rest of the UK.  Dr. Amy Sanders, a Wales Institute of Social & Economic Research, Data & Methods (WISERD)  academic…

Last year, on the 30th anniversary of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities,the Special Rapporteur on Minority Rights, Fernand de Varennes, called for a new treaty to better recognize and protect the rights of minorities. On behalf of the Coppieters Foundation, Dr. Anwen Elias has written…

The UK government alone decides who can enter the country and how migration and asylum policies are made. But devolved governments have scope to use their powers in fields such as housing, education, health and social services to shape the nature of the support that is subsequently offered to new arrivals. In recent years, the Welsh government…

Dr. Elin Royles and Dr. Huw Lewis have developed a framework to analyse the factors that influence the development of language policies.  In their contribution to The Routledge Handbook of Language Policy and Planning, they engage with two public policy approaches, multi-level governance and new institutionalism. Their chapter Governance, complexity and multi-level LPP develops a…

Dr. Anwen Elias’s insights on Corsican autonomy were included in the Nation Cymru, on 30 September. Discussions about Corsican autonomy have been on-going for 18 months, and in a recent speech French President Emmanuel Macron once again expressed his support for a new autonomy deal.  But Dr. Elias argues that the negotiations are difficult, and there are…

New research argues Plaid Cymru downplayed its demands for Welsh independence to prioritise vote-seeking goals between 2003 and 2015, and foregrounded calling for independence after 2019, with the new party leadership spurring this shift in the dramatically changed political context of the UK’s withdrawal from the EU. Demands for independence have increased across parts of…

A new published blog discusses the objectives of the ARFOR Programme, which aims to understand the relationship between the economy and the Welsh language in Wales.  In this blog, Dr Huw Lewis highlights the need for a clearer definition of how economic and linguistic factors interact and influence each other.  The ARFOR Programme, funded by…