Dr Ruth Pearce
- Lecturer in Community Development (School of Education)
Biography
I am a Lecturer in Community Development in the School of Education. My work explores issues of inequality, marginalisation, power, and transformative political struggle from an interdisciplinary trans feminist perspective.
I joined the School and the Community Development Team in July 2021, having previously worked in the voluntary sector and in various precarious, part-time and/or fixed-term academic research, teaching, and administrative roles.
My PhD was awarded by the University of Warwick in 2016. My thesis looked at how trans health is differently understood within trans communities, activist groups and professional literatures, with a range of meanings and practices contested within and between these spaces. Findings from this work have been published in the book Understanding Trans Health (Policy Press, 2018).
I sit on the Editorial Boards of the Community Development Journal, The Sociological Review, and the Bulletin of Applied Transgender Studies. I am a member of the British Sociological Association, the World Professional Association for Transgender Health and the Feminist Studies Association of the UK and Ireland, and a Senior Fellow at the Center for Applied Transgender Studies.
You can read more about my work (and access free versions of most my academic publications) on my personal site: http://ruthpearce.net.
Research interests
I am interested in how communities of marginalised peoples can work to positively transform their own lives within, against, and outside of social, educational, and political institutions.
My research to date has included:
- Understanding Trans Health (2010-2018) - a study of experiences and discourses associated with trans healthcare services in the UK.
- Queer, trans, and feminist music scenes (2012-2020) - a series of collaborative mini-projects with Dr Kirsty Lohman, exploring cultural production and grassroots community development within DIY and punk spaces.
- Athena SWAN and equality accreditation (2017-2018) - a critical examination of equality accreditation within Higher Education, including a collaborative study with Dr Charoula Tzanakou.
- Trans Pregnancy (2017-2021) - international research on pregnancy and childbirth among trans people as part of the ESRC-sponsored Trans Pregnancy project, plus a support role in the NHS-sponsored community project Improving Trans Experiences of Maternity Services (ITEMS).
I have also written on social research ethics and methodologies, plus trans and feminist politics. For more information, see my publications list.
Professional activities & recognition
Editorial boards
- Community Development Journal
- The Sociological Review
- Bulletin of Applied Transgender Studies
Professional & learned societies
- , British Sociological Association
- , Feminist Studies Association of the UK and Ireland
- , World Professional Association for Transgender Health
Selected international presentations
- 2019: Aotearoa New Zealand Trans Health Symposium (University of Waikato, Aotearoa New Zealand)
- 2019: Future research on LGBTQI issues in Finland (Åbo Akademi, Finland)
- 2019: Gender Equality and Athena SWAN (University College Cork, Ireland)
- 2019: American Sociological Association 2019 Annual Meeting (New York, USA)
- 2019: EPATH Conference (Rome, Italy)
- 2018: WPATH Symposium (Buenos Aires, Argentina)
- 2018: ISA World Congress of Sociology (Toronto, Canada)
- 2016: re:publica TEN (Berlin, Germany)
- 2016: WPATH Symposium (Amsterdam, Netherlands)
- 2012: Gender, Bodies and Technology (Roanoke, USA)