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Social and Political Science
There is a strong culture of research activity in the Department of Social and Political Science which informs academic teaching at undergraduate and postgraduate levels. Staff are engaged in research of both national and international significance and are also involved in publication, peer review, professional practice, postgraduate training and Knowledge Transfer activities. A number of PhD students supervised by Social Studies and Counselling staff also contribute to the vibrant research culture of the department and are usually offered both teaching and publication opportunities. There is an active research culture in the department with regular research seminars at which staff and postgraduate research students present their most recent work. Research and scholarship has developed and flourished around a number of key areas in the department: Criminology; Sociology, Health and Social Policy; International Development; Political Communications; Counselling and Trauma.
This collection is licenced under a Creative Commons licence. The collection may be reproduced for non-commerical use and without modification, providing that copyright is acknowledged.
Recent Submissions
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Decolonising the World Wildlife Gallery, Kendal MuseumThis paper draws on research carried out by the author between 2023-2025 for Kendal Museum’s ‘Reimagining the World Wildlife Gallery’ (RWWG) project. Engaging with broader debates surrounding decolonisation and museums, the paper argues for the importance of connecting natural history collections in provincial museums like Kendal to their colonial past. One of the primary donors to, and benefactors of, Kendal Museum’s World Wildlife Gallery in the 20th century was Colonel Edgar Garston Harrison (1863-1947) – a big game hunter and soldier serving in the British colonial army in eastern Africa 1895-1906. Harrison’s military roles included commanding violent operations against the Indigenous Nandi and Talai communities of western Kenya, who continue to seek redress for injustices endured during British colonisation and rule. This history was previously unknown to the museum but is now being incorporated into collection interpretation and gallery displays. Whilst there is much work to be done to move beyond metaphorical support for decolonisation initiatives in the UK Museum sector, including ongoing calls for decolonisation and reparative justice in collection interpretation is an important step in this process.
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Re-Claiming the Past by Re-Living in the Present: The ≠Khomani San Living Museum and the Restoration of Dignity in the Southern KalahariThis article critiques dominant development frameworks by examining the ≠Khomani San of the Southern Kalahari, who despite winning one of South Africa's largest post-Apartheid land claims, remain marginalised and impoverished. Mainstream approaches continue to frame their future through Eurocentric binaries of “traditional” and “modern,” forcing the community to navigate imposed categories that fracture social cohesion and commodify identity. Development framed as economic progress reproduces the very marginalisation it seeks to overcome. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, we analyse the ≠Khomani San Living Museum as an act of resistance to developmentalist logics, a resistance that unsettles the epistemic hegemony of development discourses. The Museum is symbolic of the need for an alternative that builds collective action for emancipation, rooted in a reclamation and reconnection with the past as well as dignity and social cohesion for the future. The museum demonstrates that development projects must centre reparative justice, dignity, and the restoration of social fabric to be meaningful for historically dispossessed communities.
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Oil-driven consumption in rentier economies: Evidence from a proxy-based MPC model in the Gulf Cooperation CouncilThis study proposes a novel macroeconomic approach, specifically formulated to estimate the Marginal Propensity to Consume (MPC) in Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) economies, based on high-frequency commodity price and trade data. As there are no reliable household consumption datasets, U.S. imports are used as a proxy for consumption, while crude oil prices serve as an instrument for measuring income. Controls are included for the American Consumer Price Index (CPI), bilateral exchange rates, and international uncertainty, as measured by the Volatility Index (VIX). Estimation via a fixed effects pooled panel regression model, covering the period from January 1992 to April 2025, yields an estimated MPC of 0.68. Controlling for demographic variations—specifically, expatriation induced lower consumption rates—the population-weighted adjustment yields a citizen MPC close to 1.0. Additionally, simulation analysis reinforces model robustness by demonstrating uniform and proportionate import responses to crude oil price shocks. These findings have significant implications for shaping fiscal policy decisions and macroeconomic forecasting in energy-exporting economies that struggle to utilize microdata, while also serving as a valuable tool for policymakers and researchers. Moreover, this novel macroeconomic model, with its forward-looking features, has significant potential to predict the demand-side effects of energy price volatility and inform adaptive and equitable energy policy decisions in the context of the GCC region.
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Archaeology as alternative prison educationThis paper presents the educational focused outcomes of a set of workshops entitled 'Introduction to Archaeology’ that were delivered within a prison. The workshops were delivered as part of a project that seeks to explore the pro-social benefits and social capital (i.e. social and structural aspects that support positive identity formation) that could be developed through engagement with archaeology, specifically for those within the criminal justice system. The workshops offered a bespoke, alternative, educational offering within an adult male prison in Wales. It was designed and delivered by an archaeologist who has an established background in the field, especially in relation to community engagement and education. The social experiences of prison participants were recorded via multi—modal methods and analysed by a criminology researcher. The inter-disciplinary project did not specifically seek to consider how archaeology can offer an innovative, alternative prison education. However, the potential of the inclusive learning that it offered through exploration of artefacts, activity and discussion in small group environments, has been revealed. The paper outlines the potential of such an approach and sets out the benefits within wider literature on prison education, public archaeology and archaeology education.
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Religion, spirituality and ultimate beliefAn exploration of religion, spirituality and ultimate belief in counselling and psychotherapy.
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A Person-Centred Perspective on SuicideThis article explores whether suicide has the potential to be considered an expression of the actualising tendency.
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Working with riskThis chapter will cover devising and using a comprehensive risk assessment
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From Kenya to Kendal: Colonel Edgar Garston Harrison’s taxidermy collection, Kendal MuseumThe collections at Kendal Museum date back to 1796 when the museum was first formed as a private collection. Today the collections are publicly owned by Westmorland and Furness Council, cared for by longstanding curators Carol Davies and Morag Clement, and managed through Kendal College. One of the major donors to, and benefactors of, the museum in the 20th century was a local man called Edgar Garston Harrison (1863-1947), of High Hundhowe, near Staveley. A soldier and big game hunter, reaching the rank of Lieutenant Colonel in the Kings African Rifles, Harrison was active in several military campaigns related to British colonialism in eastern Africa between 1895 and 1905. During this time Harrison acquired a significant number of ‘hunting trophies,' mounted taxidermy animal heads and animal skins of the characteristic fauna of the region. In 1937 Harrison proposed to donate £2,000 towards the building of an extension to the museum’s existing buildings, on condition that this be used to display his collection of hunting trophies and other artefacts to the public, the majority of which were at that time housed in his purpose-built trophy room at High Hundhowe.
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Introduction: The Dynamics of Migration Policy Implementation: The Frontline and BeyondThis special issue examines the complex dynamics of migration policy implementation across different contexts, in Europe and beyond, contributing to both implementation studies and migration studies by highlighting how policies are transformed through everyday bureaucratic work. The articles demonstrate that understanding migration policy implementation requires attention to interactions extending well beyond traditional frontline encounters. Through ethnographic and historical research across domains including asylum, nationality, detention, family reunification and border control, the collection reveals how implementation emerges through collaborative negotiations between multiple actors—street-level bureaucrats, legal experts, civil society organisations and private intermediaries. Three theoretical innovations emerge from this analysis. First, the collection shows how implementation involves collaborative knowledge production and epistemological negotiation, where different forms of expertise are assembled across institutional sites. Second, it demonstrates how documents and digital technologies fundamentally reshape implementation landscapes, creating new dependencies while promising efficiency. Third, it highlights how language, translation and communication practices become crucial sites of power negotiation in policy implementation. By examining implementation ‘at the frontline and beyond’, this collection advances understanding of migration governance as a multi-actor, technologically mediated and communicatively complex process, offering essential insights into the gap between policy intentions and outcomes in contemporary migration control.
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A scoping review of sexual and reproductive health recommendations in the context of migration to EuropeIn recent years, growing instability and conflict around the world have continued to fuel outward migration, including migration to the EU/EEA. Many migrants hail from countries and regions with a higher burden of STIs-including HIV-and are exposed to enhanced risks of sexual and gender-based violence leading to sexual health issues during their journeys. This scoping review aims to identify existing sexual health recommendations for non-European migrants in the EU/EEA and identify gaps in their implementation. Sexual health recommendations formulated in relation to the migrant population in peer- reviewed journals or by expert consensus, between 2010 and 2021, were included. A keyword search was used to retrieve relevant publications on PubMed, ScienceDirect, the Cochrane Library databases, WHO and ECDC websites. The search strategy employed was charted in a dedicated Prisma Chart. Overall, 180 publications were retrieved. Based on the abstract and after eliminating duplicates, 33 publications were included for full-text reading. The references of these publications were screened. In total, 19 publications met the inclusion criteria. Evidence-based sexual health recommendations target only newly arrived migrants and migrant children (at arrival and during stay in the country). Screening practices are mostly informed by the country of origin and related prevalence, which remains a limitation; challenges faced during migration should also be considered. Implementation and compliance with these recommendations remain uncertain, as sexual health is not funded and addressed in a uniform manner across Europe.
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Knowledge partnerships in youth justice: Building learning and evaluative culturesHM Inspectorate of Probation is committed to reviewing, developing and promoting the evidence base for high-quality probation and youth justice services. Academic Insights are aimed at all those with an interest in the evidence base. We commission leading academics to present their views on specific topics, assisting with informed debate and aiding understanding of what helps and what hinders probation and youth justice services. This report was kindly produced by Dr Sean Creaney and Dr Jayne Price, highlighting the purpose, value and functioning of knowledge partnerships in youth justice. These partnerships involve the sharing of ideas, insights and experiences between members of the research/academic community and youth justice professionals. Through aligning the worlds of academia/ research and practice, the partnerships can be mutually beneficial, bridging gaps between evidence and action while also facilitating the further development of the evidence base. Furthermore, the partnerships can help to build evaluation/research cultures across the youth justice sector, with research and evidence moving from a marginal to more central role within organisations and services. For the partnerships to function effectively, meaningful participation and reciprocal collaboration are essential components, enabled through trusting and respectful professional relationships, with everyone recognising each other’s areas of expertise, experiences, interests and priorities. Within the inspectorate, we collaborate with academics and external researchers in numerous ways, looking to utilise and maximise the knowledge, experience and skills across the research community, helping to produce a rounded and balanced view of the evidence base, while also recognising that the evidence base never stands still. Critically, knowledge partnerships and research collaborations can help drive the continuing development of rights-respecting, child-centred practice.
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Are we witnessing a revolution of the Italian citizenship regime? Postscript to the special issueWhile we were completing this special issue, in spring 2025, three possible changes to the Italian citizenship law developed that could lead to a deep transformation in the way Italian citizenship has been historically ruled and produce multiple effects on the citizenship/mobility nexus. We therefore felt the need to acknowledge them through adding this collective post-script, even if it is too early to provide a comprehensive in-depth analysis.
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Reimagining the World Wildlife Gallery, Kendal Museum: A Community Engagement and Reinterpretation ProjectFounded in 1796, Kendal Museum is a small public museum in the northwest of England. The museum’s collections reflect both the social history of the area and the connections between the district and the wider world. Particularly significant, in this respect, is the museum’s “World Wildlife Gallery,” a permanent display of hundreds of taxidermy animal and pinned insect specimens, arranged thematically by continent in “naturalised” dioramas. In 2023/2024 Kendal museum began a project to “reimagine” the World Wildlife Gallery, through engagement with regular museum visitors and the local community more broadly. Project and Community Officer, Ila Colley; local artist and community contributor Lavinia Haslam; academic and researcher Joe Rigby, and friend of the museum and contributor to a recent reinterpretation of the museum’s geological collection, Peter Lincoln, reflect on their experiences of the “Reimagining the World Wildlife Gallery” (RWWG) project.
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Perceived changes in sexual interest and distress about discrepant sexual interest during the first phase of COVID-19 Pandemic: A multi-country assessment in cohabiting partnered individualsDue to COVID-19 pandemic, different restrictive measures in terms of physical distancing and lockdowns have been introduced in most European countries, affecting all facets of social life. Currently, little is known about how partnered individuals perceive changes in their sexual life during this complex emergency. This study explored retrospectively assessed changes in sexual interest for one’s partner and levels of distress related to perceived sexual interest discrepancy during the first phase of the pandemic in a large-scale online sample of partnered individuals (n = 4813; Mage = 38.5 years, SD = 10.74) recruited between May and July 2020 in seven European Union countries and Turkey. We also examined the possible role of approach/avoidance motives for sex in reported changes in sexual interest and associated distress. Most participants (53%) reported no change in their sexual interest during the pandemic, followed by those who reported an increase (28.5%). The pattern was similar across the eight countries. Distress about discrepant sexual interest, which was only weakly related to changes in sexual interest, was significantly associated with relationship quality and emotional closeness with a partner, coping with and worrying about the pandemic, and specific motivation for sex. In contrast to avoidant and relationship-focused approach motivation, ego-focused approach motivation was related to stable sexual interest during the pandemic. The current study contributes to the understanding of the link between sexual interest and complex emergencies. Considering that the COVID-19 pandemic continues, the reported experiences and perceptions are prone to change.
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Assessing the role of the oil market in rising food prices: Strategic implications for food security in Gulf Cooperation Council countriesThis study examines the relationship between oil prices and food prices, with a focus on key agricultural commodities in the United States, including corn, soybeans, wheat flour, meat, and milk. Using a regime-switching cointegration approach, the research investigates both the long-term and short- term dynamics of oil’s impact on food prices. The findings indicate that oil prices exert an asymmetric influence on the food market. While oil prices play a relatively limited role in determining certain production costs, particularly for meat, compared to other economic factors, they nonetheless hold strong predictive power for food price forecasts. Notably, any short-term disequilibria in prices prompt a rapid adjustment back to equilibrium, contributing to market stability. The study suggests that Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, which rely heavily on food imports, can leverage their energy resources to alleviate the inflationary pressures in food markets resulting from global demand increases. A key long-term strategy involves investing in energy-intensive agricultural technologies, such as desalination for water supply and controlled-environment agriculture (e.g., greenhouses), underscoring the need for strategic foresight and comprehensive planning in agricultural investments.
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Changes in intimacy and sexuality during the COVID-19 Pandemic: A qualitative analysis of data from a survey on partnered individuals in eight European countriesThis qualitative study explores experiences of intimacy and sexuality during the first phase of the COVID-19 pandemic of 3357 participants from Croatia, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands, France, Germany, Portugal, Sweden, and Turkey. Data were collected through open-ended questions within a survey on sexuality during the pandemic. Based on a reflexive thematic analysis three themes occurred. The first theme No change was described by 41% when summarizing their sex life during the pandemic. The second theme Positive change was experienced by 25%, and the third theme Negative change by 21%. An overarching theme then emerged as: “Still the same trajectories, but the pandemic could be a catalyst for improved or worsened sex- life.” For those intimate partnered individuals who already had problems with intimacy and sexuality before the COVID-19 pandemic it seemed to remain the same or deteriorated throughout the pandemic. For those with positive experiences of intimacy and sexuality before the COVID-19 pandemic it remained the same or improved throughout the pandemic. These findings are relevant for researchers and clinicians in developing preventive and supportive interventions in the context of crisis and social isolation.
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Disenfranchised griefThis is an teaching exercise to help students to understand the concept of “disenfranchised grief” originally coined by Doka in 1989. Learners will explore how grief which is incurred through loss can be unacknowledged and not recognised leading to disenfranchisement of self and others (Corr, 1999; Cesur-Soysal & Ari, 2022). The exercise hopes to promote person-centred values along with empathic and non-judgmental listening skills as well as develop learner’s self -awareness, helping them to see grief from their own and other people’s perspectives. Drawing on further work from Doka (1999 & 2017) social and cultural contexts of loss will be explored. We will then explore how we might enfranchise people’s grief by validating and acknowledging their experiences.
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Eligibility of athletes with a difference in sex development in elite sport: Opinions of national, elite and world class athletesThere have been limited studies allowing key stakeholders the opportunity to voice their opinions on DSD athlete participation in elite sport. The purpose of this study was to survey athletes eligible to compete in the female category regarding DSD athletes' inclusion. This study surveyed national, elite and world class athletes (n = 147) competing in the female category regarding their opinions on the eligibility of DSD athletes in elite sport. The study compared current and retired Olympic sport athletes, elite versus world class athletes and current Olympic sport versus current Olympic‐recognised sport athletes. Most athletes believed that it was an unethical requirement to medicate in order to comply with eligibility regulations (67.2%). Overall, athletes did not support a separate category for DSD athletes, an opinion most strongly held for precision sports (69.5%) and a majority believed their participation in the female category was fair (54.4%, precision sports). This opinion was more commonly held by Olympic‐recognised sport than current Olympic sport athletes, particularly for sports heavily reliant on physical capacity (61.1% vs. 20%). More current Olympic sport athletes believed that the eligibility of DSD athletes for the female category was unfair, compared to Olympic‐recognised sport athletes. Athletes agreed that sports federations could be doing more to make sport more inclusive for DSD athletes (82.2%), with only 8.2% believing such athletes were treated fairly. After reviewing these novel results, the athletes' voice (in combination with scientific evidence) should be utilised to create appropriate policies that align with the collective values of athletes.
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Promoting the development of China's open economicsSince China joined the World Trade Organization, China's foreign trade has developed rapidly, driving the rapid growth of the national economy, significantly improving people's income levels, with per capita income exceeding US$10,000, and eliminating absolute poverty. Two main factors have promoted the realization of the above goals. One is reform, the continuous improvement of the socialist market economic system with Chinese characteristics. The second is openness, especially joining the World Trade Organization, which has provided a broad and relatively free international market for the hardworking and courageous Chinese people. The mutual promotion of the two has consolidated the socialist market economic system with Chinese characteristics and strengthened the determination to continuously deepen reform and opening up. In the future, for quite some time, adhering to reform and opening up and improving the level of China's institutional opening up will be the inevitable choice for the sustainable development of China's economy.
