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Professor Ruth Penfold-Mounce

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.’

Publications

Selected publications

Publications

Books/Book Chapters

  • Penfold-Mounce, R., 2023. Walking, Public Engagement, and Pedagogy: Mobile Death Studies. In The Routledge Handbook of Museums, Heritage, and Death (pp. 416-427). Routledge.
  • Penfold-Mounce, R. (2020) ‘Celebrity Deaths and the Thanatological Imagination’ in Teodorescu, A. and Jacobsen, M.H. (eds.) Death in Contemporary Popular Culture, UK: Routledge.
  • Penfold-Mounce (2019) ‘Mortality and culture. Do death matters matter?’ in Holmberg, T., Jonsson, A. and Palm, F. (eds.) Death Matters: Cultural Sociology of Mortal Life, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.
  • Penfold-Mounce, R. (2018) Death, the Dead and Popular Culture, Bingley: Emerald Publishing.
  • Reed, D. and Penfold-Mounce, R., (2014) ‘The Walking Dead as Social Science Fiction’, in Hubner, L., Leaning, M. and Manning, P. (eds.) Zombie Renaissance, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.
  • Penfold-Mounce, R. (2009) Celebrity Culture and Crime: The Joy of Transgression, London: Palgrave Macmillan.

Journal Articles

  • Murrell, A.J., Jamie, K. and Penfold-Mounce, R., (2021). ‘It was the easiest way to kind of announce it’: exploring death announcements on social media through a dramaturgical lens. Mortality, pp.1-18.
  • O’Neill, M., Penfold-Mounce, R., Honeywell, D., Coward-Gibbs, M., Crowder, H., & Hill, I. (2021). Creative methodologies for a mobile criminology: Walking as critical pedagogy. Sociological Research Online, 26(2), 247-268. Shortlisted for the SAGE Prize for Excellence and Innovation.
  • Penfold-Mounce, Ruth. (2019) 'Value, Bodily Capital, and Gender Inequality after Death', Sociological Research Online (2019). Awarded the SAGE Prize for Excellence and Innovation.
  • Manning, N., Penfold-Mounce, R., Loader, B.D., Vromen, A. and Xenos, M (2017) ‘Politicians, celebrities and social media: a case of informalisation?’ Journal of Youth Studies, 20(2), pp.127-144.
  • Penfold-Mounce, R. (2016) Corpses, popular culture and forensic science: Public obsession with death. Mortality, 21(1), pp.19-35.
  • Penfold-Mounce, R. (2015) Conducting frivolous research in neoliberal universities: what is the value of glossy topics?. Celebrity studies, 6(2), pp.254-257.
  • Penfold-Mounce, R., Beer, D. and Burrows, R. (2011) ‘The Wire as Social Science Fiction?’ Sociology, vol.45 (1), pp. 152-167.
  • Penfold-Mounce, R (2010) ‘Consuming Criminal Corpses’ Mortality, vol.15 (3), pp. 250-265.
  • Beer, D. and Penfold-Mounce, R. (2010) Researching glossy topics: the case of the academic study of celebrity, Celebrity Studies, vol.1 (3), pp. 360-365.
  • Beer, D. and Penfold-Mounce, R. (2009) ‘Celebrity Gossip and the Melodramatic Imagination’, Sociological Review Online, vol.14 (2/3)

Other Publications

Contact details

Professor Ruth Penfold-Mounce
Department of Sociology LMB/210
University of York
UK
YO10 5GD

Tel: +44(0)1904 32 3045

@DeathandCulture