People, Place and Policy provides a forum for debate about the situations and experiences of people and places struggling to negotiate a satisfactory accommodation with the various opportunities, constraints and risks inherent within contemporary society. It aims to foster dialogue between academics engaged in research and thinking about major societal challenges and concerned with identifying problems and suggesting solutions, and the policy-makers and practitioners charged with proffering a response to these challenges.
PPP is founded on the belief that academic research has a critical role to play in the creation and assessment of policies. This is not to criticise social scientists who shy away from involvement in the messy business of policy, but to celebrate the contribution of critical and questioning applied social research to both academic knowledge and thought, and the interpretation, understanding and responsiveness of policy to contemporary social challenges.
Inevitably, this focus raises some difficult questions. Applied research might strive to put an end to the perceived problems of contemporary society and promote a resolution that ensures that such problems are a thing of the past, but this agenda raises fundamental questions about what the problems are and how they can be ‘tackled’. These key questions, together with the complications of doing applied research and the potential political and ideological compromises involved, are matters of immediate concern to PPP-Online.
PPP-Online welcomes both empirically and theoretically informed discussion from different viewpoints about: the problems facing contemporary society; how they are perceived and presented by policy-makers; the appropriateness and effectiveness of the policy and practice response; the practical and political realities of policy orientated research; perspectives on different methods and methodologies; and the conflicts and challenges encountered by the researcher and the researched.
The journal will publish reflections on broad theoretical and methodological debates, as well as findings from empirical studies and policy analysis. In addition, the journal welcomes think pieces and debates between academics, policy-makers and practitioners.
The journal will provide a forum through which ideas, thinking, comment and findings can be disseminated to the policy, professional and academic worlds across a broad spectrum of areas including social and economic regeneration, housing and labour market analysis. The journal welcomes articles which are multi-disciplinary, which relate to a range of policy arenas, and which may inform debates in different territorial contexts.
The range of contributions welcomed by the journal include:
- research findings, including emerging findings from ongoing research
- methodological discussions and reflections on research and evaluative techniques and approaches
- policy reviews
- literature reviews
- opinion pieces, that will stimulate debate that might straddle a number of issues
Contributions will be between 3,000 and 5,000 words. All submissions will be reviewed by a member of the editorial board.
The editorial home of the journal is the Centre for Regional Economic and Social Research at Sheffield Hallam University. This centre is founded on principles of undertaking policy and practice oriented research informed by theoretical and metholodigical debate.
David Robinson and Peter Wells are the joint editors of PPP-Online.
Correspondence Address:
Centre for Regional Economic and Social Research, Sheffield Hallam University,
Unit 10, Science Park,
Howard Street,
Sheffield
S1 1WB.
Email: ppp-online@shu.ac.uk