People, Places, and the Public Sphere

Context WISERD is an international institute that brings together people from different academic disciplines, citizens, local communities, practitioners, civil society organisations and policy makers to co-produce research that is of the highest quality and has long-term social and economic impact. WISERD’s research grant capture amount for 2023 was £8.26m and since 2014 its total research grant capture is £35.9m from a wide range of major funders. Our research has furthered understandings of how civil society is affected by, responds, and contributes to, forms of civic exclusion and expansion, civic gain, and loss. WISERD’s mature research infrastructure and the breadth of its research impact demonstrates the potential for researchers and civil society organisations to work together and play a key role in civil repair. The challenge Our transition research programme will address the ways in which participatory democracy, collaborative governance and citizen science can address urgent collective problems including social justice, a just transition, fair work, local economic inequality, and marginalised communities. To do this we will expand our open community social science platform (WISERD Data Lab) based on principles of co-production. This is an ambitious programme of work that will maximise the impact of existing research, expand our research infrastructure, undertake further research projects based on the collection of new data, and the exploitation and linking of existing data. We will extend our contribution to research capacity with a focus on developing Research Leadership skills. Aims and Objectives Our aim is: To undertake impact activities and new research that focuses on the ways in which forms of participatory democracy, collaborative governance and citizen science can address urgent collective problems. The objectives are to: Undertake theoretically informed, policy relevant, impactful, interdisciplinary research in Wales, the UK and internationally focusing on: How transformations in the public sphere affect social justice, environmental justice, community connectivity, health and well-being and economic inequality. Co-constructing a place based and public facing data lab underpinned by principles of open social science to enable citizens, communities, and policy actors to address key challenges. 2. Expand our international and civil society research networks dedicated to understanding transformations in the public sphere and their impact on people and places. 3. Work with partners to provide applied social science evidence to promote civil repair. 4. Work with partners (including NCRM and WGSSS) to be a world class centre for training and capacity building and developing future social science research leaders. 5. Expand WISERD data infrastructure to enable interdisciplinary, mixed-method, and comparative approaches based on co-production and citizen science. Potential applications and benefits This transition research will add value and link to other existing research investments within WISERD including ESRC LPIP, AHRC, NIRC, Welsh Government, Charitable and European grants and provide a platform for further large grant applications to a range of funding organisations to ensure WISERDs continuing relevance, research innovation and impact. We have a clear plan to maximise the use of research resources to deliver wider socio-economic benefits including: (i) Advances in knowledge that contribute to policy and practices that enable communities and citizens to fully participate in decisions about policies. (ii) Deepening of public and policy engagement with citizen science. (iii) Enabling local communities and citizens to mobilize assets and resources, at different scales, in response to different social, economic, political, and environmental challenges.