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Staff Profile

Dr Ruth Machen

Lecturer in Urban Planning

  • Email: ruth.machen@ncl.ac.uk
  • Address: School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape, Newcastle University,
    Henry Daysh Building,
    Newcastle upon Tyne.
    NE1 7RU.
Background

Ruth is a political geographer interested in environmental politics, science-policy interaction and environmental planning. Her research draws from environmental governance debates, post foundational political theory and science and technology studies, to unpack questions of values, legitimacy and power during the making and circulation of environmental knowledge.


With a PhD from Durham University (2016), a BA (hons) in Human Geography (Durham University, 2003) and an MA in Landscape and Culture (Nottingham University, 2004), Ruth also has seven years policy practitioner experience leading climate change and renewable energy strategy (2005-11). Bringing this practitioner experience together with academic research on science-policy interaction Ruth seeks to advance research impact debates in ways that draw from critical theory.

Research

My research on environmental knowledge politics is driven by crosscutting questions around values, legitimacy, and power. I am interested in how particular discourses, narratives and imaginaries are produced, fixed or contested through different modes of science-policy interaction, and how possibilities for political voice and social change are opened-up or closed-down through these different processes of knowledge work. My research currently focuses on two main strands:


1. Algorithmic Climate Governance.

This research is concerned with the knowledge politics that are developed through the use of digital and algorithmic devices within climate policy-making processes. Here, I am interested in both the processes and outcomes of decision-making. During (2018-22) I held a Research Fellowship to develop a research agenda on algorithmic climate governance. Through empirical fieldwork in the USA, I examined the way that digital models, platforms and machine learning applications are shaping climate change decision-making in environmental governance at a range of scales.


2. Values within environmental governance

A longstanding theme within my research is the subject of values within environmental governance. This research involves theoretical questions on how values are conceptualised, as well as political questions around which values come to matter and what is positioned as a value vs value-free within science-policy processes. My doctoral thesis examined value orientations within the work of ClimateXChange - a climate science-policy boundary organisation in Scotland (accessed online: http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/11514/ ).


I hold a British Academy Small Grant (SG2122/ 211033) that seeks to bring these research interests together through a project entitled: Governing Climate Change Through Machine Learning Technologies: Valuing Patterns, Patterning Values.


Supporting this independent research I have also worked as part of larger international research collaborations researching climate policy and the digital, including: ESPON LOCATE: Territories and Low Carbon Economy 2016-17 (PI Simin Davoudi) which investigated the territorial governance of the low carbon economy across Europe, the RCUK-CONFAP International Network (UK Brazil) Augmented Urbanity and Smart Technologies: How Smart are our Cities Becoming? 2015-16 (PI Simon Marvin), which focused on building an international research partnership of critical digital urbanism scholars, and ESRC Smart Urban Resilience 2019-21 (PI Andres Luque) examining the use of digital technologies in disaster risk reduction in Mexico.




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Teaching

I currently convene two modules on the Planning degree programmes within APL: Environment and Sustainability (year 1) and Planning & Sustainability (year 4).


I have previously led a specialist Linked Research Project on 'Climate Games and Simulations' (2020) and have contributed to undergraduate and postgraduate teaching at Newcastle on a range of modules including: Urban Poverty, Information Sources in Planning, and Geographies of Sustainable Production and Consumption as well as a range of modules elsewhere, including Environment and Society, Cities and the Governing of Climate Change, Geographies of Crisis and Theory and Concepts in Contemporary Human Geography.


I have a passion for teaching qualitative research methodologies, and have led sessions on Qualitative Interviewing, Social Research Methods in Geography, Integrated Geographical Research Methods and Geographical Research Skills and Dissemination.


I currently also supervise masters' and undergraduate dissertations in Geography and Planning and am open to supervising PhD students in the field of environmental politics, science-policy interaction and digital environmentalism.

Publications