Media, Science and Technological Change

While the political world Bernard Crick analysed was mired in uncertainty, the challenges for politics in the twenty-first century are arguably greater and more profound than they have ever been.

As Zygmunt Bauman memorably put it, we live in a ‘liquid’ late-modern world characterized by various ‘risks’ across a number of policy areas, fluid innovations in science and technology, unpredictable dynamics of climate change, mass migration and societal/cultural instability, and the growth of ‘security’ and ‘resilience’ as key concepts for academics and policymakers.

Understanding these processes and challenges, and the implications they have for improving the functioning of our political systems, will be key for promoting a better understanding of politics in late-modernity.

A number of commentators talk about the ‘risk society’, governance of climate change and global migration, security and securitization, and resilience. We are examining the implications of these various processes for how politics is, and should be, practiced and organised in the twenty-first century.

In particular, we examine how the various challenges outlined above are or should be understood, and how we might adapt our understanding of politics, and political institutions, to improve how we manage these issues, both in policy and from a wider societal perspective.

How do politicians, the public, and academics understand the role of science and technology in governance and policymaking?

How do the public understand international migration and its societal implications? We are engaging with a broad range of contemporary policy issues, from migration and water management to health pandemics and cyber-security, and looking at new ways that researchers can address these problems through innovative, collaborative research strategies.