Presenter: Dr. Karen Scott, Senior Lecturer in Politics, Exeter University
The conceptualisation and measurement of wellbeing has become a significant policy concern over the last two decades. Many local, national, supranational and international governance bodies have engaged intensively in research to develop wellbeing indicators. Slower, however, has been the transition to using these wellbeing indicators for policy development and implementation, with there being significant critique of how governance bodies have approached this agenda. In this webinar, Dr. Scott will cover the main critiques and challenges in using wellbeing indicators as policy instruments based on her interest in knowledge politics and epistemic justice. By drawing on her own research and experience of local and central government in the UK and New Zealand, she will argue for more democratic and context-based research, as well as systematic reviews of qualitative evidence on wellbeing, to inform policy.
90 minutes
HDCA Webinar2021
Sarah C. White & Shreya Jha, Co-founders of the Relational Wellbeing (RWB) Collaborative
Webinar Description:
The Capability Approach has long taken a person-centred approach to wellbeing, emphasising what people can in practice do and be, and to some extent how they think and feel. Relational Wellbeing aligns with this, but stresses the relational character of human being, such that people’s relationships with others critically affect the opportunities they have and the choices they make. Linking personal, societal and ecological change, Relational Wellbeing looks beyond individual psychology or behaviour to the underlying conditions that promote healthy environments and happy lives. While many models of wellbeing rely on the notion of domains to represent its multidimensional character, Relational Wellbeing draws attention instead to the flows, connections and obstructions between different aspects of life, and between the diverse factors that help to generate or undermine wellbeing.
In this seminar we introduce the relational approach to wellbeing and describe how we are applying it in development practice. We look forward to a lively discussion concerning its similarities to and differences from the Capability Approach, and its implications for multidimensional wellbeing measurement.
92 minutes
HDCA Webinar
Presentation: Dr. Nicolai Suppa, Research Associate, OPHI and Juan de la Cierva Research Fellow, the Centre for Demographic Studies (Barcelona)
Commentators: Prof. Suman Seth (University of Leeds) and Prof. Flavio Comim (HDCA founding member and Ramon Llull University)
This webinar engages with the aspects of measurement of deprivations in social participation, an important but so far neglected dimension of human well-being. Operationalization and empirical implementation of the capability approach are essential to advance in the quantitative understanding of the new challenges of the field. Using high-quality survey data for Germany, we discuss in-depth axioms on poverty and deprivations and social participation.
57 minutes
HDCA Webinar2021Quantitative Research Methods
