Professor Ray Hudson, BA, PhD, DSc, DLitt, FBA

Ray is Deputy Vice-Chancellor at Durham University, a post to which he was appointed from 1 December 2012. Prior to that, from August 2007 he was Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Partnerships and Engagement) and from 2003-07 he was Director of the Wolfson Research Institute. His substantive post in the University is Professor of Geography.

Ray graduated with a BA Honours degree (1st Class) in Geography from the University of Bristol in 1969. He gained his PhD from the same University in 1974.He was appointed Lecturer in Geography at Durham in 1972, Senior Lecturer in 1984, Reader in 1987 and Professor in 1990. He has held a number of visiting appointments in several European and North American Universities and still maintains active collaboration with colleagues in a number of them. He served as Head of the Department of Geography from 1992-97.

Ray's research interests include theorising geographies of diverse economies, regional economic development and the relations between place and space, materiality and the relations between economies and environment, and the links between legal and illegal activities in the constitution of economic geographies. His research has been influential in shaping research agendas in geography and his work is frequently cited by others both in geography and in the social sciences more generally. As early as 1990 he was identified as one of the most frequently cited human geographers. Evidence of his standing in the academic community and wider recognition of his research can be seen in the receipt of the Royal Geographical Society’s Edward Heath Award for contributions to regional development studies in the European Community in 1989, receipt of the Victoria Medal from the Royal Geographical Society (RGS) for sustained excellence in research in 2005, award of honorary DSc from Roskilde University (1987), a DSc from Bristol University (1995) and a DLitt from Durham University (2013). He was elected a Fellow of the Academy for the Social Sciences in 2001, a Fellow of the British Academy in 2006 and of Academia Europaea in 2007.

Ray has been involved with a range of both national and international research organisations, such as the ESRC, the Conference of Heads of Geography Departments in the UK, which he chaired for a number of years in the 1990s, and the RGS, including serving as Vice-President and Chairman of its Research Division.

He is regularly asked to advise local and regional authorities and central government departments on issues relating to regional economic development and related matters. He is a Board member of the County Durham Partnership and the County Durham Economic Partnership. He served as Specialist Advisor to the House of Commons Select Committee on Coalfields Regeneration 2003-5 and as an expert advisor to the National Audit Office in its evaluation of coalfield regeneration programmes 2008-9. He is currently a member of HEFCE’s Strategic Advisory Committee for Enterprise and Skills.

He served as a member of the University Council Governance Task Group in 2005 and over the years has served on many major University committees. As well as serving on University Council (having served as a staff member of Council from 2003-2007) and the Finance and General Purposes Committee, he is currently a member of the University Executive Committee and the Academic Progression Committee and chairs the Fees Advisory Board, the HR Steering Group, the Human Tissue Authority Board, the Health and Safety and Health and Safety Policy Committees and the Partnerships Steering Group and is overseeing the University’s planning process. He is also a co-opted member of Hatfield College Council.