This book contests the hegemonic discourse around ‘worklessness’ – and dominant definitions of what we recognize as ‘work’. It argues the current ‘crisis’ in economic inactivity is merely the latest in a long line of moral panics that have exaggerated the scale of ‘worklessness’ while denying the value of unpaid Read more
The German VOICES team has reached an important milestone: with the final focus group in Weißwasser on 27 May 2026, the WP2 fieldwork phase is officially wrapped up! The numbers speak for themselves: a total of 155 individuals made the WP2 fieldwork possible through their engagement – across 17 storytelling Read more
May 7 saw elections in some UK councils and in Scotland and Wales. In England Reform were the biggest winner. They gained 1,454 seats, the former industrial areas of Tyneside, West and South Yorkshire being notable in Reform winning control of the councils of Barnsley, St Helens, Sunderland and Wakefield. Read more
On 23-24 April 2026, Anke Fiedler from University of Greifswald gave a keynote speech on the topic of “Locality Constructed, Contested, and Lived: Rethinking Media Inequality in Post-Industrial Communities” at the workshop “Locality and Context: Examining the Role of Place in Understanding Media Inequalities”, organised by scholars from Indiana University’s Read more
Drawing on the UK data, the paper “Voices from the Periphery: discourses of marginalisation and lost futures in deindustrialised communities in England’s North” will be presented at the UK Political Studies Association Annual Conference, held in Oxford 30 March – 1 April. The paper is co-authored by Maike Dinger, Darren Read more
Our project team will host an IAMCR pre-conference in Dublin on the topic of “Representations of (Post-)Industrial Communities: Voice, Visibility and Value”. The Call for Papers can be found here and below. We are still accepting submissions. The pre-conference is free of charge and is supported by the IAMCR Section Read more
A contribution by the two VOICES team members, Anke Fiedler and James Morrison, on the relationship between mass media regulation and social inequality in a UK–Germany comparative perspective has just been published in the peer-reviewed journal Javnost – The Public. Click here to read the full open-access article: Fiedler, A., Read more
The publication of the Index of Multiple Deprivation 25, 30 October 2025, by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) demonstrates continuing inequalities across the UK which has a severe impact on communities. The Index of Multiple Deprivations ranks neighbourhoods according to the extent of them experiencing multiple Read more
The British-German VOICES team was represented with two presentations at this year’s MeCCSA Annual Meeting in Edinburgh: The conference also saw James Morrison awarded a runners-up certificate in the Best Edited Collection category of the 2025 MeCCSA Outstanding Achievement Awards, for the book Silenced Voices and the Media: Who Gets Read more
As part of our ongoing research, members of our UK-team have submitted written evidence to a committee inquiry of the British Parliament. The inquiry on “Local bus services in England” asked for evidence on public transport across England to be submitted by 3 July 2025. Following on from the national Read more