Ruth is Crosscutting Theme Lead for media, culture and performance at The Awen Institute. She is professor of Creative Industries and Faculty Head of Research at the University of South Wales. She is also co-director with Professor Lisa Lewis of the Centre for the Study of Media and Culture in Small Nations

In public life, Ruth is Chair of Ffilm Cymru Wales and is a member of Ofcom’s Advisory Committee Wales. She helps inform media policy through her membership of the Institute of Welsh Affair’s Media Policy Group.

Ruth holds a BA (Hons) in English, MA in Contemporary Literary Studies
and PhD on ‘Spirits at the Border: Migration & Identity in African-American and Latin American Women’s Fiction’, Institute for Women’s Studies, Lancaster University.

Ruth began her academic career undertaking a PhD and teaching as a graduate assistant at Lancaster University in the Institute for Women’s Studies. Since then she has held academic posts at five UK universities and acted as an external examiner at several others. She has been centrally involved in leading both RAE 2008 and REF 2014 submissions, and has had the privilege of leading several undergraduate and postgraduate degrees. She has examined doctoral candidates in both English and Welsh, and has supervised research degree students to completion who have gone on to develop their own academic careers.