Newcastle University

Roles and Responsibilities

Research Director, School of Geography Politics and Sociology

Qualifications

BA (Hons) in Geography with Archaeology, University of Exeter

PhD in Geography, Queen Mary and Westfield College, University of London

Previous Positions

Senior Lecturer, School of Agriculture, Food and Rural Development, Newcastle University 2004-05
Lecturer, School of Agriculture, Food and Rural Development, Newcastle University, 2001-2004
Research Fellow, Centre for Rural Economy, Newcastle University, 1996-2000
Research Associate, Dept of Geography, Newcastle University, 1994-1995
Research Associate, Centre for the Study of Public Order, Leicester University, 1992-1993
Research Assistant, Dept of Geography, Saint David's University College, University of Wales Lampter, 1990-1992

Memberships

Inter-University Seminar on Armed Forces and Society

Development Studies Association

Research Interests

Military geographies, including military land use, military landscapes and post-military landscapes, military environmentalism, militarism and space/place, base conversion issues.

Gender and identity, including military identities and gender and the armed forces.

Military representation in photography and print media, and contemporary military memoirs.

Current Work

Militarism and popular culture.

Representations of the military. 

The University Armed Service Units.

Caring for post-military landscapes. 

Postgraduate Supervision

I am keen to offer PhD supervision in the following research areas: gender and identities in the military; military geographies; military landscapes; the politics of military land use and environmentalism; spatialities of military activities; visual and textual representations of armed forces.

Currently supervising:
Ann Murphy (School of Geography, Politics and Sociology): Military landscapes: space, place and identity issues for spouses of British Army personnel. (from October 2007)

Daniel Bos (as second supervisor, with Alison Williams at Newcastle and Marcus Power at Durham): The popular geopolitics of military video games.  (from October 2011)

Completed PhDs:

Dr Matthew Rech (School of Geography, Politics & Sociology): A critical geopolitics of RAF recruitment (completed 2012). 

Victoria Bell (School of Agriculture, Food and Rural Development):
Perceptions of Hadrian's Wall; a study of visitor photography (completed 2008).

Ruth Williams (School of Agriculture, Food and Rural Development): Identities and change in the Scottish fishing industry (completed 2008)

Ruth McAreavey: Communities First: rural development and participation (completed 2005)

Maureen Stephenson: ICTs and older people in rural areas (submitted 2005)

Jane Midgley: Household incomes and economies in rural Northumberland (completed 2003)

David Wood: Menwith Hill and geographies of surveillance (completed 2002)

Funding

AHRC  Caring for post-military futures: alternative development futures for former military sites in the UK.  (2013)

Development Studies Association  The Military as New Development Actors.  With Uma Kothari (PI, Manchester), Matt Baillie Smith (Northumbria), Nina Laurie (Newcastle).  See: http://research.ncl.ac.uk/military-research/themes/development.html 

ESRC The value of the university armed service units.  With Dr Alison Williams (PI) and Dr Neil Jenkings (2013-15).  See: http://research.ncl.ac.uk/military-research/themes/university-armed-service-units.html

ESRC The social production of the contemporary British military memoir. Project with Dr Neil Jenkings (2009-2011).  See: http://research.ncl.ac.uk/military-research/themes/memoirs.html 

ESRC Negotiating identity and representation in the mediated Armed Forces. With Dr Trish Winter (University of Sunderland) and Dr Neil Jenkings (Newcastle University).  See: http://research.ncl.ac.uk/military-research/themes/soldiers-itentities-representation.html

ESRC (2001) Gendered bodies, personnel policies and the culture of the British Army. With Dr Trish Winter, University of Sunderland. 

Nuffield Foundation (1998) Rural development and military base conversion.

Projects

• Negotiating Identity and Representation in the Mediated Armed Forces
  Project Leader(s): Dr Rachel Woodward
• The Social Production of the Contemporary British Military Memoir
  Project Leader(s): Dr Rachel Woodward

Undergraduate Teaching

GEO3063 Militarism: space and society (module leader)
GEO2105 Military environments and landscapes fieldcourse (module leader)
GEO2043 Key methods in human geography

• Woodward R, Jenkings KN. Soldiers. In: Adey, P., Bissell, D., Hannam, K., Merriman, P., Sheller, M, ed. The Routledge Handbook of Mobilities. London, UK: Routledge, 2013. In Press.
• Woodward R, Jenkings KN. 'This place isn't worth the left boot of one of our boys': Geopolitics, militarism and memoirs of the Afghanistan war. Political Geography 2012, 31(8), 495-508.
• Woodward R, Jenkings KN. Military memoirs, their covers, and the reproduction of public narratives of war. Journal of War and Culture Studies 2012, 5(3), 349-369.
• Scully JL, Woodward R. Naming the unknown of Fromelles: DNA profiling, ethics and the identification of First World War bodies. Journal of War and Culture Studies 2012, 5(1), 59-72.
• Woodward R, Jenkings KN. Soldiers' bodies and the contemporary British military memoir. In: McSorely, K, ed. War and the Body: Militarisation, Practice and Experience. London, UK: Routledge, 2012, pp.152-164.
• Woodward R, Jenkings KN. Soldiers' Photographic Representations of Participation in Armed Conflict. In: Gibson, S., Mollan, S, ed. Representations of Peace and Conflict. Palgrave McMillan, 2012, pp.105-119.
• Jenkings KN, Megoran N, Woodward R, Bos D. Wootton Bassett and the political spaces of remembrance and mourning. Area 2012, 44(3), 356-363.
• Woodward R, Jenkings KN. Military Identities in the Situated Accounts of British Military Personnel. Sociology 2011, 45(2), 252-268.
• Woodward R. Military Landscapes / Militaere Landskap: The military landscape photography of Ingrid Book and Carina Heden. In: Pearson, C., Coates, P., Cole, T, ed. Militarised Landscapes: Comparative Histories and Geographies. London: Continuum, 2011, pp.21-38.
• Jenkings KN, Woodward R, Williams AJ, Rech M, Murphy A, Bos D. Military Occupations: Methodological approaches and the Military-Academy research nexus. Sociology Compass 2011, 5(1), 37-51.
• Woodward R, Winter T, Jenkings KN. Negotiating military identities: memory work and the use of personal photographs by British soldiers. In: Hall, K., Jones, K, ed. Constructions of Conflict: Transmitting Memories of the Past in European Historiography, Culture and Media. Bern: Peter Lang, 2011, pp.53-71.
• Woodward R, Jenkings KN. Reconstructing the Colonial Present in British Soldiers' Accounts of the Afghanistan Conflict. In: Kirsch, S., Flint, C, ed. Reconstructing Conflict: Integrating War and Post-War Geographies. Farnham, Surrey, UK: Ashgate, 2011, pp.115-131.
• Woodward R, Winter R, Jenkings KN. 'I used to keep a camera in my top left-hand pocket’: the photographic practices of British soldiers. In: MacDonald, F., Hughes, R., Dodds, K, ed. Observant States: Geopolitics and Visual Culture. London and New York: IB Tauris, 2010, pp.143-166.
• Woodward R, Winter T, Jenkings KN. Heroic anxieties: the figure of the British soldier in contemporary print media. Journal of War and Culture Studies 2009, 2(2), 211-223.
• Woodward R. Military Geographies. In: Thrift N. and Kitchen R, ed. International Encyclopedia of Human Geography. London: Elsevier, 2009, pp.122-127.
• Woodward R. "Not for Queen and country or any of that shit...": reflections on citizenship and military participation in contemporary British soldier narratives. In: Cowan, D., Gilbert, E, ed. War, Citizenship, Territory. London: Routledge, 2008, pp.363-384.
• Jenkings KN, Winter T, Woodward R. 'Presentations of Soldierly Identity in Print Media and Soldiers' own Photographic Accounts'. In: Boll J, ed. War: Interdisciplinary Investigations. Oxford: Inter-Disciplinary Press, 2008, pp.95-108.
• Woodward R. How military landscapes work. In: Ingrid Book and Carina Heden, ed. Military Landscapes. Bergen: Bergen Kunsthalle, 2008, pp.78-101.
• Jenkings KN, Woodward R, Winter T. The Emergent Production of Analysis in Photo Elicitation: Pictures of Military Identity. Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung 2008, 9(3), Article 30.
• Woodward R, Winter P. Militarised countrysides: representations of war and rurality in British and American film. In: Fish, R, ed. Cinematic Countrysides. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2007, pp.91-108.
• Woodward R. Narratives of destruction and survival: writing and reading about life in urban war zones. Theory & Event 2007, 10(2).
• Woodward R, Winter T. Sexing the soldier: the politics of gender and the contemporary British Army. London: Routledge, 2007.
• Woodward R, Winter P. Gender and the limits to diversity in the contemporary British Army. Gender, Work & Organization 2006, 13(1), 45-67.
• Woodward R. Warrior heroes and little green men: soldiers, military training and the construction of rural masculinities. In: Bell, M.M., Campbell, H. and Finney, M, ed. Country boys: masculinity and rural life. Philadelphia: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2006.
• Woodward R. From Military Geography to militarism's geographies: disciplinary engagements with the geographies of militarism and military activities. Progress in Human Geography 2005, 29(6), 718-740.
• Woodward R, Winter P. Discourses of gender in the contemporary British Army. Armed Forces & Society 2004, 30(2), 279-301.
• Woodward R. Discourses on gender and rural restructuring in the United Kingdom. In: Goverde, H., Baylina, M. and de Haan, H, ed. Power and gender in European rural development. London: Ashgate, 2004.
• Woodward R. Military geographies. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2004.
• Woodward R. Locating military masculinities: space, place and the formation of gender identity and the British Army. In: Higate, P.R, ed. Military masculinities: identity and the state. Westport, Conn: Praeger, 2003, pp.43-56.
• Halfacree K, Woodward R. Influences on leadership and local power in rural Britain. In: Halfacree, K., Kovach, I. and Woodward, R, ed. Leadership and local power in European rural development. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002, pp.59-90.
• Halfacree K, Kovách I, Woodward R, ed. Leadership and local power in European rural development. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002.
• Woodward R. Partnership working in rural regeneration - Review. Journal of Rural Studies 2002, 18(1), 108-109.
• Woodward R. Changing gender identities and the restructuring of the British Armed Forces. In: Elam, M, ed. Reconstructing the means of violence: defence restructuring and conversion. Luxembourg: Directorate-General for Science, Research and Development, 2001, pp.73-87.
• Woodward R. In trust and on trust: the strategy for the UK defence estate. Land Use Policy 2001, 18(2), 93-97.
• Woodward R. Khaki conservation: an examination of military environmentalist discourses in the British Army. Journal of Rural Studies 2001, 17(2), 201-217.
• Woodward R. Local interests, regional needs or national imperative? The Otterburn question and the military training in rural areas. In: Tomaney, J. and Ward, N, ed. A region in transition: North East England at the millennium. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001, pp.199-217.
• Woodward R. Warrior heroes and little green men: soldiers, military training, and the construction of rural masculinities. Rural Sociology 2000, 65(4), 640-657.
• Woodward R. Gunning for rural England: the politics of the promotion of military land use in the Northumberland National Park. Journal of Rural Studies 1999, 15(1), 17-33.
• Woodward R. 'It's a man's life!': soldiers, masculinity and the countryside. Gender, Place and Culture 1998, 5(3), 277-300.
• Woodward R. 'Deprivation' and 'the rural': an investigation into contradictory discourses. Journal of Rural Studies 1996, 12(1), 55-67.