User:ProfRayHudson

Biography
Ray Hudson is Director of the inter-disciplinary Wolfson Research Institute at Durham University, which focuses on research into the health and well-being of people and places. In addition, he is a Director of nomis, the UK Office of National Statistics On-line Manpower Information System, based at Durham University. A distinguished economic geography whose work is internationally recognised as innovative and path-breaking, he is also Professor of Geography at Durham, a position that he has held since 1990, serving as Head of Department from 1992-7, having previously held posts there as Lecturer, Senior Lecturer and Reader. He holds the degrees of BA (1st class honours, 1969), PhD (1974) and DSc (1996) from Bristol University and an Honorary DSc from Roskilde University (1987). The quality of his research has been recognised in a number of other ways, including the Edward Heath Award (1989) and the award of the Victoria Medal (2005) by the Royal Geographical Society and election to the UK Academy of Learned Societies for the Social Sciences (2001) and to a Fellowship of the British Academy (2006). His work has also been influential in influencing policy, for example via serving as Special Advisor to the UK House of Commons Select Committee on Coalfields Regeneration (2003-5)

Hudson has also influenced the development of geography and the social sciences in other ways. He was the founding editor of European Urban and Regional Studies. He served as Chair of the Conference of Heads of UK Departments of Geography in Higher Education (1995-99), Chair of Annual Conference and then Vice President of the Royal Geographical Society (1999-2004), President of the Geography Section of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (2001) and on numerous Committees of the UK national Economic and Social Research Council, including its Training and Development Board (2002-6).

Hudson was one of a small number of geographers who, in the 1970s, began to explore the potential of Marxian and other strands of political economy in deepening understanding of economic geographies and uneven development. Over the next 30 years he has continued to develop his research interests around these issues and to argue that geography must retain a concern with the systemic character of uneven development and with the structural determination of socio-economic geographies as central to its academic mission. He has published widely: 20 authored or edited books, and over 100 scientific journal articles or book chapters. His work has been well received by fellow academics both within and beyond geography.

Selected publications


 * Regional Underdevelopment in late capitalism: a study of North East England (with Carney, J.G., Lewis, J. and Ive, G.) in Masser, I. (Ed) 'Theory and Practice in Regional Science', London Papers in Regional Science, No 6 Pion.


 * Wrecking a Region (Pion, 1989)

"' ... a benchmark for future studies' (IJURR, 1989); one that 'must become a key text on the region' (Antipode, 1989) and which displays 'impressive scholarship' (Environment and Planning C,1990).'"


 * Labour market changes and new forms of work in old industrial regions: maybe flexibility for some but not flexible accumulation, Society and Space 7, 5- 30 (1989).


 * ‘The learning economy, the learning firm and the learning region’: a sympathetic critique of the limits to learning, European Urban and Regional Studies, 6, 1, 59-72 (1999).


 * Producing Places (Guilford, 2001)

"'This book is nothing less than a tour de force. With a book like this, we should be shouting from the rooftops that here is a major work of geographical scholarship that stands comparison with material from other social sciences. Hudson has produced a geography book for us to be proud of. Read it; it is a superb synthesis and can only aid your understanding of capitalist space-economies' (Professor Ron Johnston, Urban Geography, 2002, 696-7)"

"'The hyperbolic endorsements one routinely encounters on the back covers of academic books are enough to dull the senses. In the case of Producing Places, however, the praise is    richly  deserved. … If  Ray Hudson were to write nothing else in the years ahead, he could  retire happy, knowing that he has written a book that will, I am sure, become a classic'  (Professor Noel Castree, Environment and Planning A, 36, 1707, 2004)."

"'Producing Places is a valuable contribution in the dialogue between radical political economy and economic geography. It would be of enormous assistance to anyone who wishes to better understand the political economy of the spatial structures of capitalist production' (Bruce Pietrykowski, Review of Radical Political Economics, 2004, 424-7)."

"'An excellent example of what taking a theoretical stance in the social sciences can and perhaps should be. … After carefully reading Producing Places, [my students and colleagues] will be making stronger theoretical arguments, asking better empirical questions, and perhaps going out in the world to do something about it – what more could anyone ask?' (Gregory Peters, Contemporary Sociology, 2002, 31, 33-4)."


 * “Conceptualising economies and their geographies spaces, flows and circuits”, Progress in Human Geography, 28, 447-72 (2004).


 * "Re-thinking change in old industrial regions: reflecting on the experiences of North East England", Environment and Planning A, 37, 581-96 (2005).

''"“Having relished the synthesis of his earlier Producing Places they [his academic colleagues] will now enjoy journeying with him into pastures new. And so, once again, they will owe Ray Hudson a great debt for serving them so well through this latest episode in his long production process” (Professor Ron Johnston, Geografiska Annaler, B, 2006, 166-7)."
 * Economic Geographies: Circuits, Flows and Spaces (Sage, 2005)


 * “On What’s Right and Keeping Left: Or Why Geography Still Needs Marxian Political Economy”, Antipode, 38, 374-95 (2006)