We are pleased to introduce our first Keynote Speaker: Ruth McAreavey

The Rural Reframed: Knowledge, Practice, and the Politics of Development

The Rural Reframed: Knowledge, Practice, and the Politics of Development challenges comfortable assumptions about what “the rural” is and who gets to define it. It interrogates the power behind rural knowledge—asking whose expertise counts, whose lives are rendered visible or invisible, and how development agendas reshape rural realities. Bringing theory into conversation with lived experience, I will argue that reframing the rural is not a theoretical process, but a political act that determines whose futures are made possible—and whose are excluded.

CV-link

https://www.ncl.ac.uk/gps/staff/profile/ruthmcareavey.html