I am attached as a research professor to the Wales Institute of Economic and Social Research, Data and Methods (WISERD).  At the Institute I am involved with colleagues in a number of on-going projects dealing with aspects of social and economic change in the South Wales valleys.  These involve questions of trade union membership and collective understandings (with Steve Davies and Rhys Davies) and the historical development  of Ebbw Vale and other of the valley towns (with Heike Doring).

Alongside these ongoing project I am also finalising drafts of books and articles relating to interviews and field work research that I have conducted with colleagues in the past. Living with Decline (with Ray Hudson) is an historical analysis of the changes that have affected the coalfields on Durham and South Wales since the miners’ strike of 1984-85. The Masters Now is a sequel to an earlier volume (Masters and Servants)  and examines the way in which mining trade unionism in the North East of England adapted to and influenced post war changes.

I have an on-going interest in the development of the trade union and labour movement in the UK and in the ways in which strategy has involved collaboration with researchers and intellectuals, relating this to current debates on “public sociology”. Some of this has been sketched in the paper “Engaging Labour”