Organisers would like to hear from people who might be interested in participating in a new ESRC seminar series on The Politics of Wellbeing, led by Prof Ian Bache (University of Sheffield), Dr Karen Scott (University of Newcastle) and Charles Seaford (Head of Well-being, new economics foundation).

The background to the seminar series is the dramatic rise of international and national policy interest in wellbeing, quality of life and happiness research, and particularly in the measurement of wellbeing for public policy purposes. The UK is at the forefront of developments with David Cameron announcing in November 2010 that wellbeing measures developed by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) would be used for public policy purposes.

Wellbeing as a concept and as policy has been researched and debated extensively in the fields of Economics, Psychology, Sociology, Geography and others. However, the discipline of Politics has been largely silent, leaving potentially important theoretical and empirical insights absent from debates. In this context, the primary aim of this seminar series is to bring the Politics discipline into dialogue with other disciplines and with policy-makers, to identify and communicate its distinctive contribution, and to contribute to well-being policy debate and policy development in the UK and beyond.

The seminar series consists of six events staged over two years. The first event took place in January 2014 (see http://politicsofwellbeing.group.shef.ac.uk/). The remaining events will focus on: Interdisciplinary Methodologies; Approaches from Governance and Public Policy; Political Economy and Wellbeing; Political Theory and Wellbeing; the International Dimension. Further details can be found on the series website (above).

Anyone interested in participating in the seminar series should contact Ian Bache ([email protected])