Introducing Professor Doris Ruth Eikhof
Tell us about yourself
I am a social scientist by training and use methods like interviews, observation and surveys to understand what people do at work, and what is done to them at work. I’ve also always been interested in arts and culture. For my PhD at the University of Hamburg, Germany, I researched work in theatre, and the cultural economy has been my field ever since. I moved to the UK almost 20 years ago now, first as a lecturer at the University of Stirling and then as a Senior Lecturer and Deputy Director of the CAMEo Research Institute for Cultural and Media Economies at the University of Leicester. Since 2020 I have been Professor of Cultural Economy & Policy at the University of Glasgow. I’ve always worked closely with industry and policy organisations such as the British Film Institute, Creative Diversity Network, ScreenSkills, British Screen Forum, Creative Industries Council and Creative Scotland. To be more agile in that applied work I am currently developing the spin-out company Design Otherwise with the University of Glasgow. Design Otherwise will translate academic knowledge into formats that industry and policy can more easily use to improve inclusion and social justice. I’m excited to see where we can take this little venture!
How would you describe your research interests and current work to someone who is completely new to the subject area?
I focus on diversity and inclusion in cultural work. An industry partner once described that as getting people to “behave less sh*t, one day at a time” – which is not wrong. I am interested in all the little things we do at work, every day, that either give people opportunity or close it off. In the arts, culture and the creative industries many people do not get the opportunities to have the career they deserve because of their gender, race, disability, class or other individual characteristics. Because of such exclusion we lose a wealth of ideas and inputs that could shape our imaginations and lives. It’s not just unfair to individual people, it’s also, quite frankly, a stupid thing to do as a society. I am working with other academics, industry and policy on how we can better understand these dynamics and how we can change them. Key to that is understanding the difference between diversity and inclusion. Diversity is just about counting how many people with a particular characteristic we have in a group. Knowing who is in a group can be important. And now a lot of our efforts focus on that. But what we really need to know is how people experience being in a group, whether they have opportunity to contribute and are paid fairly, for instance. That’s where inclusion comes in. Inclusion looks at how we behave with each other. It looks at our spaces, conversations, processes and governance, and asks how they enable creative, productive work – in the cultural economy and elsewhere. We need to get a lot better at understanding and improving inclusion, and that’s what my work focuses on.
What would you most like people to know about you?
I am also UofG’s Academic Lead for Inclusive Research Practice. In that role I work with the VP Research & Knowledge Exchange, the EDI Unit and a whole host of colleagues across the University to ensure how we do our research is both excellent and inclusive. This webpage has more: https://www.gla.ac.uk/research/strategy/ourpolicies/inclusiveresearchpractice/
What do you like most about working in the ARC?
Its transparency, the way the building makes visible what it takes to do great research. On the way up to my office I will see our reception team sign in a visitor, a research development colleague escort a trainer to the development suite, a seminar or conference being held on the ground floor, estates colleagues huddling in one of the smaller meeting rooms, a supervision session and at least three people on video calls in the breakout spaces, and then of course colleagues working away in the offices and labs, from PhD researchers to project leads and our research professionals. Add to that someone from senior management showing around an SMP or UKRI guest, our cleaners wrestling with the deluge of coffee cups, the comms team filming and the ARC Café staff stacking up for the day and you’ve got a great microcosm of what it takes to make and spread new knowledge. I love how you can see all that come together in the building.
