The UK and Ireland Rural Futures Network: Preparing for social and economic transitions Post Brexit and Covid-19

This proposal brings together academics, policy makers and practitioners from across the UK and the Republic of Ireland (ROI) to develop a future research agenda and to reframe future rural policy. Covid-19 has brought refocused attention to rural areas, now seen as safer places to live and thus more desirable. Brexit has had, and will continue to have, significant social and economic impact across the British Isles.

Responses to these drivers of change will require a new research agenda to ensure transition to a just and inclusive policy and practice environment. This proposal will support the process of reframing how we think about rural. The embryonic network will lead to longer-term collaboration, expanded to a wider network of academics and stakeholders.

Rural is often simply juxtaposed with urban, in a rural/ urban binary, generally unhelpful to nuanced social science research. We will examine the differentiated rural and consider emerging research questions and policies. For example, rural England is understood as idyllic, preserved, and unaffordable, yet this exists alongside left-behind rural places with low-priced housing and a stagnant economy.

ROI is often understood as a landscape of small holders, but this varies between the East and West. Remoteness in Scotland is quite different to England. Welsh agriculture is different to the rest of Britain because of landscape and environmental constraints.

These differences result in diverse lived realities of rural within and between each nation. Yet, there is a dominant and politicized narrative in the UK and ROI engrained in research and policy practices. It is notable that in some cases the research focus has changed little in decades e.g. affordable rural housing in England, disadvantaged rural in Northern Ireland.

Our comparative analysis will employ a state-of-the-art methodology that will nurture new thinking, creating an environment that forces participants out of established ways of thinking about the rural. It will allow us to understand the different priorities in each place, how they are determined and maintained, why polices have not always been effective.

Recognising these processes will allow us to determine the dynamics of policy blockages and thus to identify future research needs.

The loss of EU networking structures presents an opportunity to think creatively. We do this in a novel way. While EU networks were siloed (practitioners with practitioners; policy/policy; academics/academics), this network will facilitate six four-day knowledge exchanges where individuals move between spheres (policy/practice/academia) and across territories (ROI, NI, Wales, England, Scotland). Knowledge exchange is the subject of the final workshop.

We focus on three distinct areas of the rural to collaboratively develop future research questions: the spatial, the sectoral, and the socio-political construction of rural. Each has a dedicated workshop. The named Co-Is, policy makers and practitioners will attend all workshops.

The spatial focus will be on rural policies, what the loss of the EU Rural Development Programme means for different nations of the UK, how it functions in ROI, the impact of planning policies on rural housing, identifying future research needs post Covid-19 and Brexit. The sectoral focus will consider research questions about the future of agriculture, and the use of measures, both within and outside the CAP, to deliver public goods and maintain natural capital.

The socio-political workshop focuses on how the rural both at a sectoral and spatial level is socially constructed, which actors hold power, in whose interests they act, who is marginalised, and what research is needed to enhance socially equal access to the rural. The knowledge-exchange workshop will bring fresh insights about different ways of knowing and acting, and help each jurisdiction ensure just transitions to a future rural.