RSS 1.0Social 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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How can we make HE more accessible for those with criminal convictions?Students with criminal convictions are often left out of higher education widening participation efforts. This resource challenges the narrative and offers strategies to support them
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Ungendered Flesh: Racial grammars in Western engagements with sexual violence in the DRCThis article centres Hortense Spillers’ vocabulary of ‘flesh’, ‘ungendering’ and ‘pornotroping’ in order to analyse the racial grammars and continuing coloniality that informs western engagements with sexual violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Contextualising international interventions within a longer colonial history of gendered, sexualised and racialised violence, this article traces the modern industry that has developed around survivors of sexual violence, voyeuristic representations of violated bodies and strategies to elicit western audiences’ empathy through restaging scenes of violence as occurring to white bodies. It argues that such interventions risk reinforcing aspects of the colonial ungendering of black women through reproducing them as objects in global political economies and visual regimes of violence and through rendering their suffering as visible and intelligible only in relation to white liberal humanism. In doing so, it makes the case for further engagement with Spillers’ work in critical and feminist International Relations.
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Suicide Risk Isn't BinaryCounsellors and psychotherapists who work in private practice have much to offer clients who present at risk of suicide. They are not defined by organisational policies and process they might have had little input into and can, therefore, shape their practice within broader ethical and legal parameters. Such work does not come without additional professional considerations however, and this article aims to outline key aspects for good practice in a private practice context with clients at risk.
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Measuring the Social Impact of Mental Health Interventions for Low-Income FamiliesCharitable sector services play an important role in providing mental health support to those who struggle to access professional help from the public or private sector. Platform for Life is a charity that offers free of charge counselling services to low-income families struggling with poor mental health. The demand for the charity’s service continues to grow but securing funding to meet this demand is challenging. Funders want tangible evidence to prove their money is making a substantial impact in the community. This research project aims to evidence the social impact of the services provided by Platform for Life.
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Navigating the Research Process as Newbies: Personal ReflectionsAs part of the Division’s Research Seminar Series, Dr Emma Price and Dr Wayne Campbell are presenting on their personal reflections for navigating the research process as early career researchers. The presentation will reflect on their personal anxieties for beginning their research career, the pressures to publish in academia and the emotional impact of navigating the processes and systems involved in research and publishing.
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Building a Community of Inquiry for Pluralistic PracticePluralism offers a means of recognising the value of multiple voices and perspectives and has emerged as an increasingly significant guiding framework for making sense of the complexity and diversity of contemporary social life. Pluralistic Practice is an open access journal created with the intention of supporting the development of a global community of inquiry within which practitioners, communities, and citizens can share knowledge, experience, and evidence around the challenges and benefits of working pluralistically to facilitate individual and collective well-being, solidarity, and justice. The present article offers an introduction to how the journal will operate and what it hopes to achieve and extends an invitation to be part of this endeavour.
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Governing Access to Nationality Through Paperwork: The Discretionary Uses of Documentation for Naturalisation in Belgium, France and the United KingdomIn this paper, we examine the discretionary uses of documentation in the implementation of naturalisation through a comparative perspective focusing on Belgium, France and the United Kingdom. We investigate the organisational and professional factors that are likely to impact variation in the uses of discretion based on documentation. Belgium, France and the United Kingdom represent three interesting case studies involving different actors with different mandates. In Belgium, municipal agents are responsible for a mandatory check of applicants' documents before transferring the naturalisation application to public prosecutors. While only the latter have the mandate to check that the legal requirements are met, most municipal agents are involved in the examination of the requirements. In France, before the digitisation of nationality acquisition in 2023, the initial acceptance of an application involved prefectural agents who had the power to refuse application registration if the documentation was deemed insufficient or ‘non‐compliant’. In the United Kingdom, ‘Nationality Checking Services’ (NCS) were available until 2019 in local register offices for an optional check of the application before the transfer to the Home Office, which remains the decision‐making body on nationality applications. As United Kingdom law regulates strictly immigration advice, NCSs were often unwilling to express themselves on the chances of an application. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork consisting of interviews with implementation agents in the three countries and observations of their interactions with applicants, this paper contributes to shedding light on what drives variations in the governance of access to nationality through paperwork.
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Inclusive Environments: Designing a Framework for Environmental Justice (Full Report)This research builds on the report and recommendations of the Cheshire and Warrington Sustainable and Inclusive Growth Commission (SIGC) (2022) (Sustainable and Inclusive Growth Commission, 2022) . It seeks to develop an inter-disciplinary Environmental Justice Framework (the Framework) for use by public and private sector decision makers. This aims to ensure inclusivity and environmental justice is mainstreamed throughout the development, implementation, and monitoring of environmental sustainability (ES) policy and actions introduced across the subregion of Cheshire and Warrington. This Framework will seek to reduce inequalities in ES development and implementation and ensure that ES measures are built on inclusive foundations of environmental justice to ensure equity, efficacy, and impact. This research builds upon existing strengths and sub-regional work and addresses identified challenges. It brings together partners from industry, local government, community and voluntary sector, academia, and communities (particularly, marginalised voices).
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Inclusive Environments: Environmental Justice FrameworkOver the last few decades, there has been an increasing focus on ensuring that organisations (both public and private) seek to ensure that decision making around environmental challenges and sustainability is carried out in accordance with an ‘environmental justice’ approach.
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Inclusive Environments: Designing a Framework for Environmental Justice (Summary Report)As we move on from COP28 and the world continues to seek to demonstrate commitment to the Sustainable Development Goals in a meaningful way, there is a clear need to ensure that disproportionate environmental burdens don’t continue to fall on already marginalised groups within society.
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‘You Can’t Sacrifice Nothing’: Exploring the Lived Realities of Chronic Poverty in a Cost-of-Living Crisis Through Participatory ResearchThe current portrayal of the cost-of-living crisis as an isolated, unexpected issue neglects the ongoing struggles of those in chronic poverty. This article utilises agnotology and zemiology to explore these overlooked experiences. Through the use of participatory research, the article reveals the state’s neglect of chronic poverty amid public discourse on the cost-of-living crisis, and critiques proposed solutions that demand further sacrifices from those already suffering. The article highlights the lack of accountability for neoliberal policies that exacerbate poverty and vulnerability. It exposes the institutional violence and stigma against the structurally vulnerable, whose hardships are normalised. Through a zemiological and agnotological lens, the article stresses the need to reframe the cost-of-living crisis by acknowledging chronic harm and amplifying the voices of those experiencing entrenched poverty. This reframing is crucial, not only during times of crisis, but also within the broader context of systemic structural inequality.
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The evolution of the disaster risk management cycle and its continuing applicability to an evolving flood threatGlobally, hydroclimatic hazards are becoming more frequent and severe, driven by a warming climate and urbanization. With the evolving nature of flooding, research focus remains strong in this discipline. However, despite the changing nature of hydroclimatic hazards, the importance of the disaster management cycle has endured. Since its inception in 1979, the cycle has evolved, enabled by its open-system nature, through the inclusion of additional stages and stage weightings. Interpretation of the cycle has proven particularly influential in understanding how practitioners have focused most significantly on the mitigation and post-disaster stages substantiated by their continuing dominance in flood risk management. However, contemporary research and disaster risk reduction frameworks such as the Global Sendai Framework stress the importance of the preparedness stage in assisting society with an effective response and recovery. Therefore, increased research focus on the preparedness stage is viewed as a facilitator for an effective response and recovery.
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‘It’s A Sixth Sense…I See You, You See Me, And We’ve Been There’: Benefits And Challenges of Developing a Peer Mentoring Scheme With Young People in Youth Justice ServicesThe aim of this paper is to explore the development of peer mentorship within Youth Justice, including the value and utilisation of lived experience. Children and young people who have acquired specific experience of system contact can accrue experiential knowledge and become ‘experts by experience’. These children and young people are potentially capable of providing unique insights, which include sharing knowledge and experiences of navigating welfare and justice services. This research paper provides in-depth insight from an ongoing study about the experiences of those involved in delivering a peer mentoring scheme within a youth justice context. Data from semi-structured interviews with lived experienced peer mentors and practitioners were analysed using thematic analysis to explore participants’ opinions, attitudes and beliefs regarding the design and development of a peer mentoring scheme. The article contributes to a conceptual understanding of the design and delivery of peer mentorship within youth justice.
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Growing Old and Dying inside: Improving the Experiences of Older People Serving Long Prison SentencesThis report, authored by Dr Jane Price in partnership with the Prison Reform Trust’s Building Futures Programme, provides insights into the age-specific experiences of men and women aged 50 and over who are serving prison sentences of 10 years or more. Based on consultation with 121 men and women in 39 prisons in the UK, it aims to influence positive changes that would provide a more humane prison experience that recognises the distinct needs of this group. Our central recommendation is that, as a matter of urgency, the government should publish a draft national strategy for rapid consultation and final publication before the end of the parliamentary year. These proposals are based on our consultation, and this report aims to ensure that the experiences, needs and ideas of older people with lived experience of prison can contribute to this positive change.
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The Cattle are "Ghanaians" but the Herders are Strangers: Farmer-herder Conflicts, Expulsion Policy, and Pastoralist Question in Agogo, GhanaThe phenomenon of farmer-herders conflict across West Africa has prompted management strategies by several governments across the subcontinent. One of the conflict resolution mechanisms has been the policy of expulsion, which the Ghanaian state adopted as a response to incessant conflict between the settled agriculturalists and migrating Fulani herders. This paper focuses on migration and conflict as well as the intrigues and politics of expulsion of Fulani pastoralist from Agogo town in Ghana since 2009. There are multiple factors responsible for the migration of Fulani herders to Agogo area that are linked to climate change. We also examine the social and political factors triggering the expulsion as well as agitation to expel the Fulani. Counter to this we examine the Fulani reactions towards this development. Through this we also critique the policy of expulsion as a means of dealing with the pastoralist question. By means of a critical assessment of the conflict we offer strategies for policy and reconciliation.
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Talking About Suicide Risk with Clients in the Counselling ProfessionsClients presenting in therapy with suicidal thoughts or plans who may be at risk of suicide can be challenging for even the most experienced practitioner. Understanding the client’s experience of thoughts about suicide , knowing how best to respond in the therapeutic relationship, and ultimately making collaborative decisions, wherever possible, about the implications for confidentiality, pose difficult dilemmas for practitioners. This updated good practice guidance supports counsellors and psychotherapists in the UK in their work with suicidal clients.
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Arthur St. John: Tolstoyan Abolitionism in PracticeThere is no easy dividing line between reform and abolition. The Howard League for Penal Reform was formed in 1921 from the merger of two bodies, the Howard Association, founded in 1866, and the Penal Reform League, founded in 1907. While the ideas of John Howard are still widely remembered and acknowledged, the Tolstoyan abolitionism that led to the foundation of the PRL and its principal inspiration and first chair, Arthur St. John, is almost entirely forgotten. This chapter explores the writings of St. John and his colleagues, and the networks of people and activities which they initiated. Characterised by idealism and often dismissed as utopian in aspiration, their actions were paradoxically pragmatic and collaborative, feeding not insignificantly into the Prison System Enquiry Committee of 1919 and ultimately to the publication of English Prisons Today. The biographical approach allows us to situate the analysis of penal systems within a set of larger ideas of social change concerning religious freedom, education, social norms, and social and economic justice, for example. Though Tolstoyan abolitionism is often closely intertwined with Quaker approaches or erased within Fabian narratives, it remains distinctive in its politics and vision.
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Microaggressions and Impoliteness at the Crossroads: EU academics in the UK facing hostility in the Brexit ageThe Brexit process created a loss of rights and heightened hostility towards EU migrants within the UK, even among groups previously shielded from such animosity, notably EU academics. This paper is based on 24 clear instances of microaggressions, and two bordering hate speech involving EU academics in England and synthetises the psychology/philosophy literature on microaggressions with linguistic frameworks of “rapport management” and “impoliteness triggers” leading to a novel understanding of the phenomenon. Microaggressions are defined as a specific type of impoliteness “of the mild kind”, characterised by repetition at the individual and/or the collective level, which produces feelings of annoyance, irritation and shock. This study shows that Brexit-microaggressions usually involve social identity face and the breach of equity/association sociality rights. They mostly take the shape of formulae echoing slogans entrenched in the discourses of Brexit and arise out of a mismatch between pro-Brexit comments uttered in the presence of an EU migrant.
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The Silent ObserverCemil Egeli explores ideas around evil eye phenomena and their potential meanings in therapy.
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Exploring suicide potential and the actualising tendency: A qualitative study of suicide notesAim or purpose: The aim of the research was to establish if, within person-centred theory (PCT), suicide could potentially be considered an expression of the actualising tendency (AT). Within the theoretical boundaries of the person-centred approach (PCA) the research raised questions which included the clarity of Rogers’ (1959) meaning in relation to ‘perverse and unusual conditions’ for those that may ‘…actualise their potentiality for pain or self-destruction’. Design or methodology: This research was conducted from a qualitative perspective using forms of analysis requiring interpretation by the researcher. A sample of 31 suicide notes were analysed: firstly using stanza analysis; and secondly narrative analysis. Ethical approval: This was granted by University of Chester.
