Our publishing

We have been publishing authors from marginalised groups since our inception 25 years ago, with the belief that experiential knowledge is a powerful means to understand social issues alongside other research methods.

Tackling inequalities and social exclusion is a central plank of our publishing strategy and we have published cutting-edge work across gender, sex, sexuality, age, disability and health, socio-economic background and social class, race and ethnicity, and religion and belief since 1996. We ensure that EDI implications and intersectionality are discussed in many of our publications where the focus is on other topics.

Our publishing supports sustainable development from the global to the local, encompassing the Global North and the Global South. This social mission makes us unique amongst University Presses. In this video submission to the redux Sustainability Award, Chief Executive Alison Shaw explains:

Our key monograph series address EDI issues, such as Global Migration and Social Change which opens up the interdisciplinary terrain and develops new scholarship in migration and refugee studies. The Sociology of Diversity series brings together the highest quality research specific to ethnic, racial, gender and sexualities diversity.

We amplify the content of series like these to a broader audience via our Transforming Society online magazine, with articles such as Migration and the politics of life and death. We have created spaces on the website dedicated to key themes, including race, gender and LGBTQIA+ rights.

We develop impact plans that go beyond publishing the book and produce additional content. The Class Ceiling: Why it Pays to be Privileged by Sam Friedman and Daniel Laurison shows how class affects entry into prestigious jobs by people from working class backgrounds. As a result of our campaigns it received extensive media coverage, including the author being centrally featured in the BBC documentary ‘How to Break into the Elite’ and a review in the London Review of Books.

The Shame Game: Overturning the Toxic Poverty Narrative by award-winning journalist Mary O’Hara draws on testimony ranging from school children to media personalities to challenge the pernicious portrait of those who are poor, and this is supported by the multi-platform initiative Twist It.

We believe strongly in publishing with people who face social challenges, and not just publishing work about them. We include their voices and direct testimony through participatory, user-led and coproduced research. Notably we are the publishing partner of the AHRC Connected Communities research project.

We also publish different formats to appeal to non-traditional audience like the photo ethnography Invisible Britain from documentary film maker Paul Sng whose photo exhibition and documentary toured the UK, and Generation Share where author events across India, USA and Europe shared the stories of the global contributors.

Open Access is crucial to our vision because it encourages dissemination and reduces inequalities in access to knowledge globally. We have published over 300 OA journal articles and over 100 OA books, for example Tracing the Consequences of Child Poverty and The International Handbook of Health Literacy.


Back to our main EDI information page.