Profile
Biography
Ruth is a Professor in the Sociology Department at the University of York. Her background in Sociology is united with an interest in crime and deviance, death studies and popular culture and celebrity. Notably she is now developing a career focus on pedagogy (the method and practice of teaching).
She is the Deputy Head of Department (Teaching, Learning and Assessment) as well as a Dignity Contact.
Ruth has established the Death and Culture Network (DaCNet) at York. This network runs a biannual international conference as well the Death and Culture Book Series (Bristol University Press). She is regularly asked to speak at academic events and does much public engagement work particularly through the annual York Dead Good Festival and York Festival of Ideas. She has also filmed with the BBC’s Hairy Bikers, and BBC4 as well as recording with Radio 4 and writing for award nominated blogs and scholarly sites such as The Conversation.
Watch The Long Boi Phenomenon: A Sociological Perspective featuring Ruth and the famous campus duck.
Teaching
Other teaching
Ruth’s academic career focuses on pedagogy and the improvement of staff teaching and student learning experiences.
She is an elected member of the University Senate since 2021 and is a Senior Fellow with the Higher Education Authority (SFHEA).
She has been regularly nominated by undergraduate and postgraduate students for various University of York Students' Union (formerly YUSU) awards, some of which she has even won, including Supervisor of the Year (2016), Supporting the Student Voice (2019), Teacher of the Year (2020), and Most Inspiring (2023). In 2021, Ruth was awarded the Vice Chancellor Teaching Award for Career Excellence.
She currently leads on the following modules as well as contributing to other modules from year one through to Masters level:
Undergraduate
- Understanding Contemporary Crime
- 3rd Year: Morbidity, Culture and Corpses
- 3rd Year: Crime, Media and Culture (convenor)
Postgraduate
- Critical Perspectives on Criminal Justice System (convenor)
Research
Overview
As part of her teaching Ruth supervises PhD students research projects. She has a broad interest in the cultural and sociological aspects of celebrity, crime and deviance, and death and is keen to supervise PhD students who wish to conduct research particularly in areas that overlap with her key research interests and which focus on pedagogy:
- Pedagogy
- Celebrity Culture
- Death and Mortality
- Popular culture, the media and visual culture
- Cultural Criminology
Ruth was nominated by her doctoral students for the University of York Students' Union (formerly YUSU) Excellence Awards as PhD Supervisor of the Year (2017) gaining second place and was ‘Highly Commended’. Her doctoral students nominated her saying:
‘Embarking on a PhD with Ruth is like taking an apprenticeship in all things academic, and she always shows boundless faith and belief in the abilities of her students, even when they are at their most doubtful.’
