People

Dr Ruth Raynor

I am a lecturer in urban planning and a theatre-maker. My work explores everyday politics of emotion and affect via creative practice (specifically performing arts) based social research. Developing from work that ‘dramatised austerity’ with women in the North East of England, I have been involved in two further ESRC funded projects, both examine complex formations of hope in uncertain times, and amidst decline. The first, with Dr David Webb, was an open chair that looked at the re-working of relationships between third sector, private sector and public sector organisations as a result of funding cuts and the localism agenda, and the other explores Northern Imaginaries in Sunderland, Gateshead and Newcastle, with song-writer Jennie Brewis. In different ways these projects explored how local residents and key stake-holders related to (felt, imagined and sought to intervene in) the effects of a changing (withdrawing) local state. This will inform a broader investigation into endings, withdrawals and genres of 'Urban recovery.' I am currently developing a devised theatre project that examines the different forms that endings take, and how they are lived. This may well be shaped by very recent events!

https://www.ncl.ac.uk/apl/people/profile/ruthraynor.html