Dr Joanie Willett

My research specialises in the politics and economics of regional development, focussing on how people, economies, communities, and geologies, geographies, and ecologies co-evolve.   I consider how people acquire the skills to be able to navigate and contribute to local economies, drawing on fieldwork in the UK and the US.   I apply this to rural and peripheral regions, resource economies, and local government.  In current and recent projects I look at skills, finding work and local governance in critical minerals, and in nature recovery.  I have completed consultancy work around workforce and skills development; and local government.

My research has been published in journals such as The Journal of Rural Studies, Sociologia Ruralis, Political Studies, Environment and Planning C: Population and Space, Journal of Material Culture, Habitat, and British Politics. My first book Affective Assemblages and Local Economies, (with Rowman and Littlefield) draws on ethnographic, embodied research in Cornwall UK, and SW Virginia US, imagining regions as complex adaptive assemblages to explore a more effective regional development.  These perspectives underpin my 2024 textbook An Introduction to UK Politics which examines the role which identities play in contemporary UK politics.  My next book, More-Than-Human Politics: Worldmaking and the American Political Imaginary, is under contract with Bloomsbury Academic

In addition to my Fulbright, I have been PI or Co-I on AHRC, ESRC, and UKRI research projects, and have contributed to a number of Parliamentary Inquiries, such as the House of Lords Select Committee on the Rural Economy “Time for a Strategy for the Local Economy”, and the House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee’s “Fixing Fashion: Clothing, Consumption, and Sustainability” and "Green Jobs" reports. I am invited to present my research internationally in both policy and academic settings, including the European Union Committee of the Regions (with the European Association for Local Democracy); The European Parliament (with the European Free Alliance); the University of California Berkeley; Umeå University; the Virginia Tech Office for Economic Development; Feile Belfast, the National Association of Local Councils; and the Ministry for Housing, Communities, and Local Government.

I am co-director of the Institute of Cornish Studies, a former trustee of the Political Studies Association, co-convenor of the PSA Local Government and Politics specialist group, and help to coordinate EdgeNet, a Regional Studies Association network which explores questions of peripheral and rural development. I have been interviewed by local, national and international media (TV, print and radio), including the BBC, NPR, The Guardian, and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Follow me on LinkedIn.