Dr Kathryn A. Burnett is based in the Division of Arts and Media, University of the West of Scotland with subject leadership roles and teaching practice across inter-disciplinary undergraduate and Masters programmes in Creative Media and Arts Practice. Kathryn has formal leadership experience in a variety of UWS management roles including Subject Leader, LTC Chair, Depute Chair School Board, University Research Board nominated representative for Media, Creative Industries, and the Research Group Lead of both Media and Culture, and PGRs in the former School of (Media) Creative and Cultural Industries; she was previously ECR and PGR Lead for the Creative Media Academy and is currently PGR Lead for Arts and Media/Creative Industries Division in the School of BCI, UWS.

Current external activity includes UWS representative on the UArctic Arctic Sustainable Arts and Design Network (ASAD); is an organising group member for UK wide MSIG in Participatory and Collaborative Methods; Kathryn is UWS representative on the Scottish Graduate School for Arts and Humanities Executive. She has served on academic, cultural and arts boards and committees including Scottish media and culture associations, community archives, and community interface of theatre and film in Scotland, most especially concerned with rural, island and/or Scottish identity and cultural political dimensions, including two decades on 7:84 Theatre (Scotland)'s executive board, and more recently as a Board Member for The Reid Foundation, Scotland. Currently on the editorial board of Northern Scotland.

With a background in social anthropology, sociology and cultural studies, Kathryn’s research interests include the mediatization and representation of remote and island spaces; identity, ecologies and place narratives of Scotland’s rural communities, coasts and islands; cultural work, precarity and creative enterprise; Scottish cultural heritage and arts contexts including Gaelic and Scots for applied creative practice; sustainable communities, resilience, development, entrepreneurship, cultural policy and the commons in small island, remote, peripheral and rural contexts.  Kathryn is the former Co-Director of the Scottish Centre for Island Studies.

Contact: kathryn.burnett@uws.ac.uk

Key current research focus includes:

• rural and remote places and lives, with specific reference to Scotland’s islands and issues of cultural identity, community, sustainability and enterprise;
• the mediatization and representation of Scotland with reference to alterity, heritage and negotiated identity;
• cultural work, enterprise, place and rural cultural industries;
• Scotland's creative and arts learning links with the Arctic and Circumpolar north including archival, community assets and creative methods resource sharing.

To engage further with an island studies and remote rural research focus within Scotland and across 'north' locales, regions and nations as a collaborative, co-produced and community engaged activity.  In addition, I wish to undertake inter-disciplinary research collaboration with Scottish based HEIs, local authority agencies and SMEs as well as with international education providers and partners with interests in remote and rural cultures, island studies and critiques of Scottish identity, community and its mediatization not least with a view to external collaborative activity with 'north' regional and national experience, including Arctic and 'near Arctic' focus.