Shorts
Our Shorts are between 20-50,000 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.
Radical Solutions to the Housing Supply Crisis
This book analyses the roots of the current housing crisis in England, critically reviewing the development of policy under successive UK Governments and presenting a specific critique of the current Conservative Government’s housing and planning reforms.
Rebuilding Social Democracy
Core Principles for the Centre Left
Reclaiming Social Democracy is the first major reappraisal of social democracy on the centre-left since the election of Jeremy Corbyn. With a foreword by Lord Hain, it examines its foundational principles and identifies the values needed to find a route back to political credibility for Labour.
Regulating Police Detention
Voices from behind Closed Doors
Custody visitors are volunteers who make unannounced visits to police custody blocks to check on the welfare of detainees. However, there is a fundamental power imbalance between the police and these visitors. This timely book offers detailed proposals for radically reforming custody visiting to make it an effective regulator of police behaviour.
Reimagining the Nation
Togetherness, Belonging and Mobility
This book develops new ways of thinking beyond the nation as a form of political community by transcending ethnonational categories of ‘us’ and ‘them’. Drawing on scholarship and cases spanning Pacific Asia and Europe, it provides a constructive agenda for critical nationalism studies.
Repealing the 8th
Reforming Irish Abortion Law
Irish law only currently allows for abortion where the life of the pregnant woman is at risk. A constitutional referendum will be held in 2018 to liberalise abortion law. This book offers practical proposals for policymakers and advocates, including model legislation, making it an essential campaigning tool leading up to the referendum.
Rethinking Poverty
What Makes a Good Society?
This book calls for a bold forward-looking social policy that addresses continuing austerity, under-resourced organisations and a lack of social solidarity. Based on a research programme by the Webb Memorial Trust, a key theme is power which shows that the way forward is to increase people’s sense of agency in building the society that they want.
Rethinking Sustainable Cities
Accessible, Green and Fair
Makes a significant contribution to the sustainable urbanisation agenda through authoritative interventions contextualising, assessing and explaining the relevance and importance of three central characteristics of sustainable towns and cities everywhere; that they be accessible, green and fair.
The Right to Buy?
Selling off public and social housing
In The Right to Buy, Alan Murie provides an authoritative account of the origins, development and impact of the policy across the UK and proposals for its extension in England (and decisions to end it in Scotland and Wales).
School Governance
Policy, Politics and Practices
Informed by twenty years’ experience as a school governor, Jacqueline Baxter considers what implications the 2014 ‘Trojan Horse’ scandal has had for the future of a democratic system of education in England.
A Sharing Economy
How Social Wealth Funds Can Reduce Inequality and Help Balance the Books
A Sharing Economy proposes radical new ways to close the UK’s growing income gap and spread social opportunities. A new social wealth fund would boost economic and social investment and simultaneously strengthen the public finances and offer a powerful antidote to austerity.
Sixteen for '16
A Progressive Agenda for a Better America
Sixteen for '16 offers a new agenda for the 2016 US election crafted around sixteen core principles from securing jobs to saving the Earth.
It is a manifesto which makes the argument for each of these positions, clearly, concisely, and supported by hard data. Its progressive agenda charts a realistic path toward a better tomorrow.