Shorts
Our Shorts are between 30-50,000 words and are available as e-books and in print with a shorter production schedule.
We publish two types of Shorts under both Bristol University Press and Policy Press:
Research: books providing the latest cutting-edge or topical research findings (longer than an article but shorter than a monograph) publishing in hardback for an international market with a lower priced eBook which allows for individual purchase;
Insights: books covering issues of wide interest and where a timely intervention is likely to attract substantial media coverage and reach a broad non-specialist audience, these accessibly-written Shorts enable authors to join the debate authoritatively and quickly and are published as low-price paperbacks and eBooks.
Policy Press also publish the following Shorts:
Policy and practice: as part of our commitment to impact and engaging with a wider audience, we also publish ‘policy and practice’ Shorts where there is support with dissemination through Open Access, organisational links, course buy-in or other direct routes to the policy and practice audience.
Written by experts in their fields, these formats provide high quality, peer reviewed content quickly and are available for both personal purchase and for libraries and institutions through the usual channels.
Download a Shorts proposal form, including detailed guidelines, here.
China’s COVID-19 Vaccine Supplies to the Global South
Between Politics and Business
This book unpacks the political economy of China’s COVID-19 vaccine supplies to the Global South. Examining the political and economic forces at play, the book demonstrates how China’s vaccine provisions have been determined by a complex set of commercial interests, domestic politics, and geopolitical relationships.
- AvailableHardback
- AvailableEPUB
COVID-19 and Racism
Counter-Stories of Colliding Pandemics
This book addresses the prejudices that emerged out of the collision of the two pandemics of 2020: COVID-19 and Racism.
- AvailableHardback
- AvailableEPUB
Welfare That Works for Women?
Mothers’ Experiences of the Conditionality within Universal Credit
This book analyses fresh empirical evidence which demonstrates the gendered impacts of the new conditionality regime within Universal Credit. Drawing on in-depth interviews with mothers, it offers a compelling narrative and policy recommendations to make the social citizenship framework in the UK more inclusive of women.
- AvailableHardback
- AvailableEPUB
Pathways to Sustainable Welfare
Inertia, Emergence and Transformation in Swedish Cities
Pathways to Sustainable Welfare critically examines how cities can address the dual challenges of climate change and sustainability while ensuring the welfare of their populations. Focused on three Swedish cities, it explores the integration of environmental and welfare concerns in local policies, urban movements and public opinions.
- ForthcomingHardback
- Currently not availableEPUB
Vulnerabilities in Paid Care Work
Transnational Experiences, Insights and Voices
This book explores the recent experiences of diverse paid care workers in four very different national contexts – Finland, Canada, South Africa and England – to learn from their experiences during COVID-19 and its aftermath.
- ForthcomingHardback
- Currently not availableEPUB
The Court of Appeal in Northern Ireland
This compelling book underscores the significance of the Court of Appeal in Northern Ireland, making a significant contribution to the literature and proposing recommendations on how it could enhance both its efficiency and its reputation.
- ForthcomingHardback
- Currently not availableEPUB
Feeding People in a Crisis
The UK Food System and the COVID-19 Pandemic
This book tells the story of changing patterns of food provision in the UK during the COVID-19 pandemic. From the pandemic to the war in Ukraine, climate change and inflation, the authors discuss the food system’s winners and losers in a time of rapid social change.
- ForthcomingHardback
- Currently not availableEPUB
Exploring New Temporal Horizons
A Conversation between Memories and Futures
This pioneering work explores how in our digital age of connectivity, temporal acceleration and real-time simultaneity impact personal and institutional experience. Bringing memory and future studies into a unique dialogue, the book offers an intervention to the current ‘temporal crisis’ of social life and sociological debates.
- AvailableHardback
- AvailableEPUB
Spectacle and Trumpism
An Embodied Assemblage Approach
This book advances new perspectives for critical thought by exploring the links between consumer culture and the post-truth politics of Trumpism, and how Trump embodies the frightening potential of capitalism to intersect with and enable fascistic forms of power.
- AvailableHardback
- AvailableEPUB
Understanding and Improving Public Management Reforms
Why do top-down reforms to public services so often over-promise and under-deliver? Using five concepts from psychology, economics and organisational sociology and diverse examples of successes and failures, Thomas Elston addresses this pressing question of good governance.
- AvailableHardback
- AvailableEPUB
Reviving Local Authority Housing Delivery
Challenging Austerity Through Municipal Entrepreneurialism
This book provides crucial insight into the fight back against austerity by local authorities through emerging forms of municipal entrepreneurialism in housing delivery, examines what this means for the changing relationship between local and central government and provides new ways of thinking about meeting housing need within and beyond the UK.
- AvailableHardback
- AvailableEPUB
Social Media and the Automatic Production of Memory
Classification, Ranking and the Sorting of the Past
Social media platforms hold vast amounts of data about our lives. Content from the past is increasingly being presented in the form of ‘memories’. Critically exploring this new form of memory making, this unique book asks how social media are beginning to change the way we remember.
- AvailableHardback
- AvailableEPUB