An Introduction to UK Politics

My research focusses on the entangled relationship between people, how they organise into communities, and the landscape that they are situated in (geography, geology, and ecology). I use the New Materialisms to explore the politics and economics of entanglement, and the implications of a more-than-human politics on social and environmental justice. In practical terms, I often find myself exploring rural economic development, and local government.

My Fulbright All Disciplines scholarship (ethnographic inspired) fieldwork explores what an entangled politics looks like, drawing on case studies in Appalachia, New Orleans, and California.

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, and British Politics. I recently published my book Affective Assemblages and Local Economies, (with Rowman and Littlefield) where drawing on ethnographic, embodied research in peripheral parts of the US and the UK, I imagine regions as complex adaptive regional assemblages to explore a more effective regional development.

I have been PI or Co-I on AHRC and ESRC research projects, have been awarded a Fulbright All Disciplines scholarship for 2022-23. I 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, 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 Twitter on @JoanieWillett

Arianna is an associate professor/reader in local politics and public policy and the deputy director of the Local Governance Research Centre (LGRC) at the Department of Politics, People and Place, De Montfort University. Between July 2019 and February 2020, and again between December 2021 and April 2022, she served as interim director of IPPR North.

Arianna's work focuses on the politics, governance and political economy of the north of England; 'levelling up' and regional inequalities; devolution, multi-level governance and constitutional change in the UK; and the changing landscape of local government, especially in the context of austerity, Brexit and Covid-19 recovery. She has written extensively on these topics, and her latest book 'Developing England's North. The Political Economy of the Northern Powerhouse' (with Craig Berry) was published by Palgrave in 2019.

Her work actively engages with the world of policy and practice. Most recently, she was on the executive of APSE's Local Government Commission 2030 - and independent inquiry into the future of local government in the UK. She has contributed to several IPPR North research projects, and in 2019 she co-authored the State of the North report 'Divided and Connected Regional inequalities in the North, the UK and the developed world' (with L. Raikes and B. Getzel).

Arianna also regularly comments in the media on devolution, local government, constitutional change and European politics.