Aled Blake

He/Him/His/Himself

BlakeA6@cardiff.ac.uk

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School of Geography and Planning,
Cardiff University

Lead supervisor:
Dr Andrew Williams

Other supervisor(s):

• Dr Sioned Pearce

Start date: October 2024 (Full time)

Award: General

Subject Pathway:
Human Geography

Thematic Cluster:
Place, Environment and Development Cluster

Exploring perceptions and experiences of foundational and wellbeing economy policies through lived experience in low-income communities.

Growth-first economic development approaches have failed to solve intractable social and spatial inequalities in post-industrial communities around the UK. ‘Alternative’ economic approaches are gaining traction as solutions. However, we know little about how these approaches are perceived or experienced on the ground. This timely research will address this knowledge gap, exploring how people in former coalmining communities of the South Wales Valleys (Beynon and Hudson 2021) experience new approaches to economic development. 

Wales’s pioneering Well-being of Future Generations Act (2015) has centred wellbeing economics (WE) as an alternate measure of prosperity, challenging ‘traditional’ ideas around growth and economic development (Howe 2023). This policy runs alongside Welsh Government’s investment in, and promotion of, the foundational economy (FE), that is, the economy of the everyday (Bentham et al. 2013). Calafati et al (2019) posit that wellbeing and FE are inextricably connected, defining wellbeing as the citizens’ freedom to “live the lives they have reason to value” (p. 1). 

There is an urgent need to understand the concerns and aspirations of communities impacted by deindustrialisation and the perceived responsiveness of state actors in the context of emergent alternative economic development. 

Research Impact

This PhD would have a range of impacts:  

1. Policymakers: by engaging with people to understand how policy relates to their lives and the impact of that policy on their wellbeing. 
2. Practitioners: by illuminating the effectiveness of new economic policy paradigms in the context of low-income places. 
3. Communities and residents: through formulating their responses to policy and providing a platform to voice their ideas about and responses to interventions. 
4. Academic communities: by providing empirical research on the impact of new economic paradigms through qualitative approaches. 
5. Advocates and think-tanks: providing new perspectives and scrutiny of government activity. 

Bibliography