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Staff Profile

Dr Ruth Raynor

Senior Lecturer in Urban Planning

  • Email: ruth.raynor@ncl.ac.uk
  • Telephone: 0191 2088811
  • Address: Room 8.05 Henry Daysh Building, Newcastle University
Background

I am a Senior Lecturer in Urban Planning. My research covers three key areas, which are connected through their specific attention to space and place: 1. The study and practice of performing arts for participatory social research 2. Engaging and advancing post-structural feminist theories and politics of affect, specifically loss, grief, precarity and hope. 3. Exploring relationships between social policy and embedded/ embodied lived experiences. 


The Waves: Mapping geographies of loss and grief during Covid-19.

My current research examines the embodied and embedded geographies of loss and grief during covid-19, through creative, participatory workshops and interviews which have informed the co-production of a scripted performance. This work seeks to understand how Covid-19 restrictions impacted experiences of loss, with a focus on the significance of place. See short explainer video: https://youtu.be/SJvZMxVCCyM


Alternative Futures

As part of an ESRC 'Impact Accelerator' funded project, I worked with artists to explore 'Alternative Futures' with residents in Sunderland, Gateshead and Newcastle, a related ESRC 'Open Chair' with Dr David Webb, explored how relationships between third sector, private sector and public sector organisations were re-worked amidst austerity. In different ways these projects explored how local residents and key stake-holders related to (felt, imagined and sought to intervene in) futures against a backdrop of austerity.


Dramatising Austerity

Before coming to Newcastle in 2017, I completed an ESRC funded 1+3 Masters in Research Methods (for which I worked with Open Clasp Theatre Company and the GAP project) and a PhD in Human Geography at Durham University. This work involved exploring and staging the experiences of women who were out of paid work from the onset of austerity. My paper ‘Dramatising Austerity: Holding a story together, and why it falls apart’ was selected as one of Cultural Geographies’ top 25 papers since its formation (of over 1000 published). My First degree was in 'Drama: Theatre, Film and Television Studies' at the University of Bristol.


Performance Research Network

Together with Dr Emma Whipday in SELL I co-direct the Performance Research Network - an interdisciplinary group drawing together thinkers and doers from across Newcastle University spanning literature, theatre studies, human geography, creative writing, urban planning, music, business studies, architecture, fine art, culture and media studies, digital cultures, and beyond. We research performance; conduct research through performance; and research to create performance: for us, ‘performance’ is a subject, a methodology, and an outcome. This network enables colleagues to share their research; learn from each other's methodologies and approaches; share teaching materials and exercises; and develop relationships with local practitioners, companies, and arts organisations. The network also aims to increase the visibility of both performance research at Newcastle (within the University, nationally and internationally) and the vibrancy of the North East performance sector.


Research


FUNDING


2023 - £4960 Catherine Cookson ‘The Waves: Living Geographies of Loss and Grief'

2022 – £6650 Medical Humanities Network for the Wellcome Trust ISSF Medical Arts, Humanities and Social Scienes ‘The Waves: Living Geographies of Loss and Grief.'

2022 - £5000 Catherine Cookson ‘The Waves: Living Geographies of Loss and Grief’ for the same project: Dean’s discretionary HEIF fund, £2000 Pioneer award £1000. 

2022 - £1200 GCRF award for set design training training

2021-2022, 2020-2021, 2019 – 2020 (rolling) £7173 ICAP and NUHRI Pioneer Award with Dr Emma Whipday to develop and run the Performance Research Network

2018- 2019 - £9000 ESRC IAA ‘Alternative Futures: Gateshead, Sunderland and Newcastle.’

2018 – 2019 - £18,000 ESRC Open Chair (with P.I. Dr. David Webb) ‘Doom and Hope in Austerity?’

2019 - £2000 ICAP Newcastle University fund to develop Performance Research Network

2015 - £15,000 N8 & ESRC IAA (with P.I. Prof. Rachel Pain) to develop strategies for co- produced research and understanding impact and stage 'DieHard Gateshead.' 

2015 - £5000 Washington Arts Centre in kind support for the above project 2015 - £1000 Durham University post-graduate fund for research in support of the above. 

2009 - £75000 ESRC 1+3 funded PhD scholarship for 'Dramatising Austerity: On holding a story together and why it falls apart.'


SELECTED PUBLICATIONS 


    - Raynor, R. and Veal, C. (2023) Spectacle of Endings in an Endless Present - Introduction to special issue on ‘Endings in Creative Practice’ for Geohumanities.

-       Raynor, R. (2021) Hopes multiplied amidst decline: Understanding gendered precarity in times of austerity, EPD: society and Space 39 (3) 553-570

-       Raynor, R. (2020) Performance, Performativity and Performing Arts in ‘Introduction to Social Geographies’ the Newcastle Social Geography Collective eds. Rachel Pain and Peter Hopkins (Rowman and Littlefield) 

-       Raynor, R. (2020) Writing the End in ‘Creative Writing for Social Research’ ed. Richard Phillips and Helen Kara (Policy Press)

-       Raynor, R. (2019) Speaking, Feeling Mattering: Theatre as Method and Model for Co-produced Research Progress in Human Geography 43 (4) 691- 710.

-       Hitchen, E. and Raynor, R. (2019) Encountering Austerity: Materialities, Intensities and Localities Introduction to special issue co-edited for Geoforum.

-       Raynor, R. (2019) Making Theatre That Matters: Troubling Subtext, Motive and Intuition (2019) in ‘Non-representational Theory and the Creative Arts’ ed. Dr. Candice Boyd and Dr. Christian Edwardes, Palgrave Macmillan

-       Davoudi, S. Crawford, J. Raynor, R. Reid, B. Sykes, O. Shaw, D. (2018) Spatial Imaginaries: Tyrannies or Transformations Town Planning Review 89 (2).

-       Raynor, R. (2017) Dramatising Austerity: On Holding a Story Together (And Why it Falls Apart) Cultural Geographies24 (2)

-       Raynor, R. (2017) (De)composing Habit Through Theatre-as-Method Geohumanities 1 (3)108-121 


 

REPORTS, COMMENTARIES AND CREATIVE WRITING  


Raynor, R with Underhill, K (2023) 'The Waves,' A Play about Grief in Lockdown.

Raynor, R (2020) 'Pandemic Unrealities' in Civil Society and Post Pandemic Planning ed. Emma Ormerod, Simin Davoudi and Miranda Iossifidis 

Raynor, R (2019) Changing the question from 'Is this the end of austerity?' to 'what ends in Austerity?’” Antipode, Online Intervention

Webb, D. Raynor, R. and Ormerod, E. (2018) ‘Collaboration in the North East, Learning from Current Practice’ for the North East collaboration network event – November 2018.

Pain, R. et. al. (2016): ‘Mapping Alternative Impact: Alternative Approaches to Impact from Co-produced Research’ http://eprints.gla.ac.uk/115470/1/115470.pdf N8 and ESRC funded report, developed collaboratively at a Durham University network meeting (organised by Rachel Pain and myself) makes the case for an expanded understanding of what constitutes ‘impact.’

Pain, R. and Raynor, R. (2016) ‘A Soup of Different Inspirations: Impact and Co-produced Research’ http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2016/01/28/a-soup-of-different- inspirations-impact-and-co-produced-research/ Blog summarizing reflections on a participatory theatre- making process.

Pain, R. and Raynor, R. (2016): ‘Knowledge that Matters Realising the Potential of Coproduction’ https://coproductionblog.files.wordpress.com/2016/02/final-report-co- production-2016-01-20.pdf. Report outlines non-linear and often-intangible relationships between co-produced research and impact.

Raynor, R (2015) ‘Diehard Gateshead’ Produced by Theatre of Moths, Directed by Neil Armstrong.

Raynor, R. (2011) Evaluation Report ‘Herstory Told’ for Open Clasp Theatre Company Report on collaboration between Open Clasp Theatre Company and GAP project – a support group for women sex workers in the North East of England.


SELECTED PEER REVIEWS 


America Quarterly; Cultural Geographies; EPD: Society and Space, Geohumanities; Geoforum; Social and Cultural Geography; Progress in Human Geography; Distinktion: Journal for Social Theory; Sage, Palgrave MacMillan.

SELECTED SPEAKING AND PUBLIC ENGAGEMENT


I have been invited to speak at many academic and cross-sector conferences, events and seminars to discuss austerity and precarity, creative methodologies, and gender politics. Presentations include:


  • Vicarious Life (with Harrison Smith) for ‘'Collective feelings and contemporary conditions', Organised by Esther Hitchen, Helen Wilson and Ben Anderson, RGS-IBG (May 2020)
  • Panel discussant for 'Troubling Hope' Organised by Harry Pettit RGS-IBG. (May 2020)
  • Alternative Futures for ‘Time and Austerity: Troubled Pasts/ Hopeful Futures’ Organised by Sarah-Marie Hall, Stephanie Denning and Ruth Raynor, RGS-IBG (May 2020)
  • Vicarious Life for ‘Mediated Presents’ Leverhulme funded workshop, Goldsmiths University, UK (May, 2019)
  • Post-show panel discussant for ‘Locker Room Talk’ written by Gary McNair directed by Anna Ryder Live Theatre, Newcastle (May, 2019)
  • The Politics of Hope Amidst Decline: Gendered Precarity in an Austere UK for ESRC funded cross-sector conference, ‘Feminist Engagements with Austerity’ University of Bristol, UK (January, 2019)
  • Hope and Gendered Precarity for Cities Seminar Series: ‘The Emotional Life of the City’ LSE, UK (January, 2019)
  • Starting with the End for ‘Creative Writing for Social Research,’ AHRC funded workshop Sheffield University, UK (November, 2018)
  • Making Theatre for Social Research, for ‘Methods on the Move’ the Sociological Review Foundation workshop, Liverpool University, UK (October, 2018)
  • Dramatising Austerity: Holding a Story Together (And Why it Falls Apart...) for ‘Tyneside Specificities’ panel, at ‘Undisciplining: Conversations from the Edges’ The Sociological Review Annual Conference, Gateshead, UK (June, 2018)
  • Mediating, Scenes: The Politics of the Present (with Prof Ben Anderson) for ‘The social life of time: power, discrimination and transformation’ Edinburgh, UK (June, 2018)
  • Austerity Futures for the Global Urban Research Unit Symposium, Newcastle University, UK (May, 2017)
  • Panel Discussant for public screening of I, Daniel Blake, directed by Ken Loach, Tyneside Cinema, Newcastle, UK (November, 2016)
  • Holding Things Together (and why they fall apart ... ): Encountering and Dramatising Austerity for ‘Performing Politics’ RGS-IBG, London, UK (September, 2016)
  • Austerity: Suspended Dissonance ‘Austerity Geographies’ Conference for Distinguished International Visitor Mark Blyth, Durham University, UK (May, 2015)
  • Making, Play, Work: on Austerity Lived ‘Annual Social Justice Conference,’ Durham, University, UK (June, 2015)
  • Discussant: Crisis/emergency and Austerity for ESRC ‘Austere Futures’ seminar series, Durham University, UK (June, 2014)


CONFERENCES, EVENTS, WORKSHOPS AND SEMINARS – SPEAKER

  • Scene: the Present Tensed, (with Prof Ben Anderson) for ‘The Present’ AAG, Chicago, USA (2015)
  • Theatrical Attunements: on (De)Composing habit at the ‘Spaces of Attunement: Life, Matter and the Dance of Encounters’ conference at Cardiff University, UK (March, 2015)
  • Working with Women, Dancing, Pulled and Resisting through Austerity’s Smog for ‘Futures in Question Conference,’ as part of the ESRC Austere Futures seminar series, Goldmiths, London, UK (September, 2014)
  • Imagining State-welfare Relations as Domestic Abuse for ‘Intergenerational geographies of family and intimate relations’ RGS-IBG, London, UK (August, 2014)
  • Exploring a Process of Participatory Script Development with Focus on the Productive Role of Future (Imagined) and Present Audiences for: ‘Complicating the co-production of art: Hidden humans and acting objects’ RGS-IBG, London, UK (August, 2014)
  • The Sun-Shines on: Drama Games and Habit for ‘Locating performance and the political,’ Durham University, UK (January, 2013)


CONFERENCES, EVENTS, WORKSHOPS, SEMINARS - ORGANISER


  • 2019 Co-organised Starting with The End(s) with Nick Rush-Cooper x 2 sessions for the RGS- IBG, London (August, 2019)
  • Co-organised Time and Austerity: Troubled Pasts/ Hopeful Futures with Sarah Marie Hall and Stephanie Denning, double session and pop-up exhibition for the RGS-IBG, London (August, 2019)
  • 2016 Co- organised and chaired: Encountering Austerity (1) (2) and (3) with Dr. Esther Hitchen for the RGS- IBG, London (September, 2016) resulting in a special issue in Geoforum
  • 2015 Co-organised and chaired with Prof Ben Anderson, Durham University: The Present (1) (2), American Association of Geographers, Chicago, USA, (April, 2015)
  • Co-organised with Prof Rachel Pain, Durham University: Mapping Impact Together Participatory Research Hub, Durham University, UK funded by N8 and ESRC IAA (October, 2015)
  • 2013 Co-organised with Dr Elizabeth Richardson, Durham University: Locating Performance and the Political Durham University Geography Department, funded by the Cultural Geographies Research Cluster UK (January 2013)





Teaching

I am currently the academic lead for EDI in APL, following a stint as DPD for 'Geography and Urban Planning.' As well as dissertation, PGR supervision, and personal tutoring, I enjoy contributing lectures and workshops on participatory research methods, austerity, and feminist approaches to urban environments across a range of modules and courses. My core teaching currently consists of:


As convenor and lecturer

Urban Poverty (L2 Planning and Geography) 

Understanding Place (L1 Planning)

Dissertations (L3 Planning and Geography) 


Previous Teaching in Human Geography University of Durham: 

People, Participation, and Place (L3) 

Using Geographical Skills and Techniques (L2) 

Research Frontiers (L3 and 4) 

Social Research in Human Geography (L4) 

Geographies of Everyday Life (L3) 

Cities (L2) 

Environment and Society (L1) 

Space and Place in a Changing World (L1) 

Introduction to Geographical Research (L1) 


Publications