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.
The Marketisation of Welfare-To-Work in Ireland
Governing Activation at the Street-Level
This book offers Ireland’s introduction of a welfare-to-work market as a case study that speaks to wider international debates in social and public policy about the role of market governance in intensifying the turn towards more regulatory and conditional welfare models on the ground.
- AvailableHardback
- AvailablePDF
Adverse Childhood Experiences and Serious Youth Violence
Whereas crime more generally has fallen over the last 20 years, levels of serious youth violence remain high. This book explores the relationship between adverse childhood experiences and serious youth violence and advocates for a more psychosocial approach to trauma-informed policy and practice within the youth justice system.
- AvailableHardback
- AvailableEPUB
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
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.
- ForthcomingHardback
- Currently not 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
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.
- 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.
- AvailableHardback
- AvailablePDF