Centre for Rural Economy

Staff Profile

Marian Raley

Research Associate

Background

Graduated in 1992 from the innovative BSc Countryside Management degree at Newcastle so setting the scene for a trans-disciplinary approach to research, connecting the socio-economic, policy and natural science spheres. An applied social scientist who has worked on a wide variety of projects, employing a wide variety of methods, but with particular interests in agriculture, rural business, delivery of public goods, and food and society (innovation; food risk).

 

Expertise developed in a range of both quantitative and qualitative methods, including:

▪  Evidence-gathering (prior to quantitative or qualitative analysis), principally by semi-structured interviews, surveys, Delphi technique and participative methods (workshops; citizens’ jury). Stakeholder analysis. Has undertaken high quality, independent field research engaging with a broad range of stakeholders from the general public and practitioners to policymakers.

▪  Analysis of rural economies using official statistics including inter alia Farm Business Survey, Agricultural census/Survey and Population Census.

▪  Developing indicators for sustainable development.

I have contributed to EU FP6, FP7 and H2020 projects (e.g. SEAMLESS; PRIMA; Pegasus; Connect4Action; Feed-a-Gene; SuperG), and prepared numerous reports for both local and national bodies.

 

 

 

Research

Recent policy-relevant work includes EU InterReg project RuralGrowth (business responses to covid-19 pandemic) and Defra Environmental Land Management Scheme Test and Trial: Curlew Contracts, 2019-2020 with Northumberland National Park and Natural England. Currently working with National Innovation Centre for Rural Enterprise (NICRE) to investigate rural firms and internationalisation.

Publications