PhD Candidate Ashleigh Weeden starts 2022 with a spate of publications addressing key challenges in contemporary rural development policy and practice

The first half of 2022 has seen a number of publications by Rural Studies PhD Candidate Ashleigh Weeden. These research contributions cover a range of current challenges facing rural communities written largely through the lens of exploring what “the right to be rural” means for contemporary rural development and policy. From explorations of pandemic-driven displacements to the challenges of modeling rural connectivity policies, Ashleigh has worked with colleagues across the province and across Canada to produce the following publications:

• Urban Flight and Rural Rights in a Pandemic: Exploring Narratives of Place, Displacement, and “the Right to Be Rural” in the Context of COVID-19, published in Annals of the American Association of Geographers, Volume 112, Issue 3 (with Jean Hardy and Karen Foster).
• Searching for a conceptual nexus? A critical analysis of community, place, and territorial approaches to rural development, published in the Annals of Regional Science (with Mikaël Akimowicz and Ryan Gibson).
• Rural Connectivity Models: Digital Readiness: An Evaluation of Rural Broadband Models in British Columbia (with Sarah-Patricia Breen), Applied Research Report.
• The Right to Multiple Futures in the Shadow of Canada’s Smart City Movement (Chapter in The Right to be Rural, Editors: Karen Foster and Jennifer Jarman).

Please contact Ashleigh Weeden for access or discount codes for any of the above publications.