Staff Profiles

About me

I'm a researcher at the McCord Centre for Landscape where I specialise in the geographies of "awkward heritage". I'm interested in how places and landscapes embody uncomfortable, awkward narratives of the past (such as histories of failure, guilt, stress, and precarity) and how people stitch those narratives into places. At present I'm the principal investigator for War and the Moral Outdoors (AHRC Living Legacies) and I also manage the travelling exhibition for its sister project, Women and Leisure during the First World War. 

I practice my research interests across a variety of thematic areas.

• How people use landscapes to address and endure difficult, even harrowing situations (War and the Moral Outdoors)
• How the removal of legacy features from landscapes is believed to improve, even "rescue" them..
  
• Museum practices and the exhibit/visitor interface.
• Mobilities and the restoration of mobile and quasi-mobile objects (see Wright, 2018).
• Early and mid-Twentieth Century architecture and the architect/client relationship.
• The present day acts and affects of inhabiting "heritage" architecture. (see Wright, in progress).
  

From my previous experience as a Teaching Fellow I also retain pedagogic interests.

• The experiences of Postgraduate Teaching Assistants (see Wright and Barr, 2018).
• The portability of the Higher Education learning experiences to other Key Stages.

Background and qualifications

I was awarded my doctorate from the University of Wales Aberystwyth in 2010. Until 2015 I worked in Higher Education teaching before moving to research focused roles, first at the School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics and currently at the McCord Centre for Landscape. 

Social media

@paulwright_geog

As Principal Investigator and Lead Applicant:

As Research Associate:

As a heritage consultant:

I was a Human Geography Teaching Fellow at Newcastle University (2013-2015) building on my teaching experience at the University of Leeds (2011-2013).

Modules led:

• Geog2035 Geographies of Economies (Leeds)
• Geo1018 Geographical Analysis (Newcastle)

• Geog1025 Leeds from the local to the global (Leeds)
• Geog1310 People Place and Politics (Leeds)
• Geog2020 Political and Development Geographies (Leeds)
• Geog2040 Inside European Cities, Belgrade fieldtrip (Leeds)
• Geog2065 Research Methods with Career Skills (Leeds)
  
• Geog3600 Dissertation (Leeds)
• Geo1015 Human Geographies of the UK (Newcastle)
  
• Geo1096 Geographical Skills, including Langdale fieldtrip (Newcastle)
  
• Geo2043 Key Methods for Human Geographers (Newcastle)
• Geo2111 Doing Human Geography Research, Theory and Practice (Newcastle)
  
• Geo2123 Social experiments, diverse economies, Copenhagen Fieldtrip (Newcastle)
• Geo3099 Dissertation (Newcastle)

• Fizzywig the Pig (Environmental politics themed children's theatre production in association with Cap-a-Pie)
• Women and Leisure during the First World War (Archive research workshops for community researchers)
• War and the Moral Outdoors (Digital mapping and wayfinding workshops for community reseasrchers)
  

• Wright P. Mobility, museums and awkward unsettling. Area 2018, 51(1), 45-54.
• Barr M, Wright P. Training graduate teaching assistants: What can the discipline offer?. European Political Science 2019, 18(1), 143-156.
• Wright P. War and the Moral Outdoors. In: Lilley, K. and Ell, P, ed. Framing Legacies of the Great War and its Centenary. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2020. Submitted.
• Wright P. Provoked hope, future benevolence, and architectural geographies of persistence. Social and Cultural Geography 0. In Preparation.
• Wright P. Women and Leisure during the First World War. 2017. St Mary's Heritage Centre, Gateshead; Ulster Museum, Belfast; Central Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, and other venues in Tyne and Wear, Exhibition of nine illustrated panels.
• Fyfe F, Wright P. SeaScapes Landscape Partnership Historical and Archaeological Review. 2019.