Policy Press

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 the following type 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;

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.

If you are interested in writing a short trade book, please either contact the relevant editor for your subject area or our general non-fiction editor.

Download a Shorts proposal form, including detailed guidelines, here.

Showing 37-48 of 207 items.

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.

Policy Press
  • 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.

Policy Press
  • AvailableHardback
  • 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.

Bristol Uni Press
  • ForthcomingHardback
  • Currently not availableEPUB

Assembling Comparison

Understanding Education Policy through Mobilities and Assemblage

This book combines assemblage theory and policy mobilities to inform the study of comparative and international education (CIE), focusing on education policy and how such policy moves are enacted.

Bristol Uni Press
  • AvailableHardback
  • AvailableEPUB

Sentencing Serious Sex Offenders

How Judges Decide when Discretion is Wide

Addressing a lack of high-quality sentencing information in Ireland, this important book explores the factors that influence judges to impose a sentence of long-term imprisonment in sexual offence cases. The book is designed to be used in the classroom and the court, as well as providing a solid evidence base to inform policy-makers.

Bristol Uni Press
  • 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.

Bristol Uni Press
  • 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.

Bristol Uni Press
  • 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.

Policy Press
  • ForthcomingHardback
  • ForthcomingEPUB

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.

Policy Press
  • 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.

Bristol Uni Press
  • AvailableHardback
  • AvailableEPUB

Dimensions of Impact in the Social Sciences

The Case of Social Policy, Sociology and Political Science Research

This concise, informative book analyses impact across the social sciences. Drawing on fifteen interviews with senior academics for a longitudinal view, the author sets out valuable recommendations of how and when scholars can achieve impact.

Policy Press
  • AvailableHardback
  • AvailableEPUB
  • AvailableKindle

Mapping Good Work

The Quality of Working Life Across the Occupational Structure

This illuminating study of working life uses decades of large-scale survey to review notions of good work and job satisfaction in the UK. Exploring data on hundreds of occupations, it charts disparities in fulfilment potential across professions, and sets out fresh ideas for improving satisfaction at work nationally.

Bristol Uni Press
  • AvailableHardback
  • AvailablePDF