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The Wales Rural Observatory has a core research and
management team of seven leading rural researchers drawn from the academic
staff of the School of City and Regional Planning at Cardiff University
and the Institute of Geography and Earth Sciences at the University
of Wales, Aberystwyth. In addition, it employs five full time research
staff. Brief details of the research specialisms of Rural Observatory
staff, together with contact details,are provided below:
Professor Paul Milbourne
Site: Cardiff
Contact details: Tel. 029 20 875791 - Email milbournep@cardiff.ac.uk
Paul Milbourne is a Professor in the School of City and Regional Planning,
Cardiff University and Director of the University’s Rural Environment
and Society Research Centre. His research specialisms include rural
social exclusion, housing and homelessness in rural areas, social change
and conflict in the countryside, and the rural environment. He is the
Chair of the ESRC funded Rural Economy and Society Study Group (which
brings together academic, policy and practitioner communities with an
interest in rural areas), a member of the Executive Committee of the
European Society for Rural Sociology, and an Editorial Board member
of the journal Sociologia Ruralis. Paul has been awarded grants and
contracts totalling £2 million to undertake research on a broad
range of rural topics including poverty and social exclusion, housing,
homelessness, young people, hunting, social forestry, in-migration and
service provision. He has also written widely on these topics and has
published five books and more than 70 journal articles, chapters and
reports.
Core Research Team Members
Professor Terry Marsden
Site: Cardiff
Contact details: Tel. 029 20 875736 - Email marsdentk@cardiff.ac.uk
Terry Marsden is Professor of Environmental Planning and Policy in the
School of City and Regional Planning, Cardiff University. He has a broad
range of research and policy experience based around the themes of international
rural development, sustainability and the rural environment. Terry Marsden
is currently co-director of a major ESRC-funded research centre (£3.1
million) on sustainability at Cardiff University (Centre for Business
Relationships, Accountability, Sustainability and Society) and is involved
in funded projects concerning food networks in rural areas, the multi-level
governance of the rural environment, and intermediate labour markets
in rural Wales. In addition to being the author of more than 150 reports,
books and articles on these themes, he has acted as an advisor to the
Welsh Assembly Government, Defra, the Prime Minister’s Strategy
Unit and ESRC on rural research and policy. He is currently a member
of the Strategic Advisory Committee of the ESRC’s Rural Economy
and Land Use Research Programme.
Dr Michael Woods
Site: Aberystwyth
Contact details: Tel. 01970 622589 - Email zzp@aber.ac.uk
Michael Woods is a Senior Lecturer in the Institute of Geography and
Earth Sciences, Aberystwyth University. He has specialist expertise
on rural policy, community governance, partnership working and regeneration,
and participation and community leadership. He was co-director of the
recently completed research study on the ‘Role, Functions and
Future Potential of Community and Town Councils in Wales’ undertaken
for the Welsh Assembly Government. His previous research includes work
on participation in community leadership in England and Wales for the
ESRC and on partnership working in rural regeneration in Mid Wales for
the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. He has written widely on these topics
for both academic and practitioner audiences and has provided advice
for Defra and the Countryside Agency on the introduction of the Quality
Parish Council scheme in England. He is author of two books, Rural Geography
(Sage) and Contesting Rurality: Contemporary politics in the British
countryside (Ashgate).
Research Associates
Dr Lawrence Kitchen
Site: Cardiff
Contact details: Tel. 029 20 874970 - Email kitchenl@cardiff.ac.uk
Lawrence Kitchen is a Research Associate in the School of City and
Regional Planning, Cardiff University. His research specialisms and
interests include social forestry, particularly in the context of environmental
justice, social exclusion, governance, intermediate labour markets,
spatial planning, and social capital. He has worked on research projects
concerned with rural food chains; relations between the Forestry Commission
and communities in South Wales; the connections between environment
and social exclusion in the post-industrial countryside; the evaluation
of rural Intermediate Labour Markets; spatial planning and the Forestry
Commission in Wales; and social capital and Forestry Commission projects
in Wales. Lawrence is the author and co-author of a number of papers,
book chapters and published reports on these topics.
Dr Nerys Owens
Site: Cardiff
Contact details: Tel. 029 20 874970 - Email OwensNE@cardiff.ac.uk
Nerys joined the Observatory as a Research Associate in 2008 after completing
a PhD in forestry governance at the School of City and Regional Planning
at Cardiff University. Her doctoral thesis brings together key ideas
on social nature, governance and regulation to provide a critical investigation
of the shifting governance of forestry in the UK, with specific reference
to two case study forests in rural mid-Wales. As a CASE award holder
funded by the ESRC and the Forestry Commission, she has carried out
research addressing both policy and academic audiences. Recent work
has engaged with a broad range of rural themes, including the challenges
of service provision in ‘deep rural' Wales, poverty and social
exclusion, housing, renewable energy, and more recently, the impacts
of the recession in rural Wales. She has direct experience in the design
and delivery of rural policies and processes, gained during a period
working within the Rural Affairs Division of the Welsh Assembly Government.
From this, she developed a keen interest in issues relating to sustainable
communities, in particular how local rural communities can be supported
to fully engage with, and participate in, decisions affecting their
localities. Her knowledge of developments in policy and social issues
is therefore extensive and up to date, enabling her to work effectively
in policy-oriented research.
Nerys is a fluent Welsh speaker.
Dr Sophie Wynne-Jones
Site: Aberystwyth
Contact details: Tel. 01970 6222608 - Email
Sophie has recently joined the Observatory, in March 2011, to undertake
research on rural development and CAP reform. This research is intended
to work with farmers and rural communities across Wales to inform rural
policy measures, including the ‘Glastir’ Axes 2 payments
and ‘Living Wales’ environment framework. In addition, this
work is proposed to collate best-practise from across Europe, in the
implementation of agri-environment measures and ecosystem service delivery,
to inform scenario modelling for responses to CAP reform in Wales. Prior
to joining the Observatory, Sophie worked as a lecturer in the Institute
of Geography and Earth Sciences, Aberystwyth University, where she specialised
in rural geography and environmental politics. She also completed an
ESRC funded PhD at IGES, in 2010, which focused on the development of
ecosystem services within Wales. Specifically, her thesis details the
political-economic drivers behind these governance mechanisms, attending
to the wider politics of CAP reform and world trade negotiations, as
well as the role of practitioners in the field as policy intermediaries.
In addition, she has conducted research with the Transition Towns Initaitive
and community activists across Wales, exploring responses to climate
change and peak oil. Previously she has worked for the John Muir Trust
in the development of their environmental education programme in Scotland
and Wales.
GIS Associate
Jonathan Radcliffe
Site: Cardiff
Contact details: Tel. 029 20 874970 - Email radcliffej@cardiff.ac.uk
Jonathan is a research associate at Cardiff University with a specialism
in GIS. He has experience in using a range of the latest GIS software,
to solve a wide variety of geographic problems, and has experience in
maintaining spatial datasets.
Research Project Support Officer
Jayne Coleman
Site: Cardiff
Contact details: Tel. 029 20 874956 - Email colemanje1@cardiff.ac.uk
Jayne has recently joined the Observatory, and provides administrative
support to the research team.
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