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Professor Ruth Penfold-Mounce

Profile

Biography

Ruth is a Professor in the Sociology Department at the University of York. Her background in Sociology is united with an interest in crime and deviance, death studies and popular culture and celebrity. She is passionate about innovation in teaching and learning and is a keen advocate for 'learning on the move' through podcasted self guiding walks:

She is the Deputy Head of Department (Teaching, Learning and Assessment) as well as a Dignity Contact. She has been an elected member of the University Senate (2021-2023) and is a member of the Standing Committee for Assessment (2025-).

Ruth has established the Death and Culture Network (DaCNet) at York and is an editor of the Death and Culture Book Series (Bristol University Press). She is also a Visiting Pedaogic Fellow at University of Bath (2021-2025), Senior Fellow of Higher Education Authority (2022) and a National Teaching Fellow (2025)

She is regularly asked to speak at academic events and does much public engagement work particularly through the annual York Dead Good Festival and York Festival of Ideas.

Watch The Long Boi Phenomenon: A Sociological Perspective featuring Ruth and the famous dead campus duck.

Social media presence:

  • Bluesky: @deathandculture.bsky.social‬
  • LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/ruth-penfold-mounce-005260371

Teaching

Overview

Ruth’s academic career focuses on pedagogy and the improvement of staff teaching and student learning experiences.

She has been a Senior Fellow with the Higher Education Authority (SFHEA) since 2022 and was awarded a National Teaching Fellowship (2025) - the first ever held in the Sociology Department.

Ruth was nominated by the Department of Education to attend one of the three Royal Garden Parties at Buckingham Palace in May 2026 for her contribution to Higher Education.

She has been regularly nominated by undergraduate and postgraduate students for various University of York Students' Union (formerly YUSU) awards, some of which she has even won, including Supervisor of the Year (2016), Supporting the Student Voice (2019), Teacher of the Year (2020), and Most Inspiring (2023).

In 2021, Ruth was awarded the Vice Chancellor Teaching Award for Career Excellence.

She currently leads on the following modules as well as contributing to other modules from year one through to Masters level:

Undergraduate

  • 2nd Year: Understanding Contemporary Crime
  • 3rd Year: Morbidity, Culture and Corpses (convenor)
  • 3rd Year: Crime, Media and Culture (convenor)

PhD Supervision

Overview

Ruth supervises PhD students research projects. She has a broad interest in the cultural and sociological aspects of celebrity, crime and deviance, and death and is keen to supervise PhD students who wish to conduct research particularly in areas that overlap with her key research interests and which focus on pedagogy:

  • Pedagogy
  • Celebrity Culture
  • Death and Mortality
  • Popular culture, the media and visual culture
  • Cultural Criminology

Ruth was nominated by her doctoral students for the University of York Students' Union (formerly YUSU) Excellence Awards as PhD Supervisor of the Year (2017) gaining second place and was ‘Highly Commended’. Her doctoral students nominated her saying:

‘Embarking on a PhD with Ruth is like taking an apprenticeship in all things academic, and she always shows boundless faith and belief in the abilities of her students, even when they are at their most doubtful.’

Ruth currently supervises:

  • 2016- Peggy Lockwood-Lord (pt). Transgression Studies: Non-representational and intersectional explorations of countercultural extremity.
  • 2024- Natalie Brown (pt). Gendered consumption of true crime.
  • 2024-Paul Ord (ft) ESRC AWARD. Algorithmic Hauntings: miscarriage and grief in online social media.
  • 2024- Bethan Jones (pt MRes) Examining the Motivations for School Shooter and Mass Killer Fanfiction
  • 2024- Laura Szomanska. (ft distance learning) A Digital Ethnography of Dark Romance Communities on BookTok and
    Bookstagram
  • 2025- Emily Herbert (ft) Exploring Post-Death Planning Across the Life Course: A Generational Perspective on Ceremony, Disposal, and Post-Disposal Practices in Yorkshire

Publications

Selected publications

Books/Book Chapters

  • Penfold-Mounce and Falcetta (eds) (2026) Innovative Qualitative Methods for Criminology: An Introduction to Dissertation Research, Routledge
  • Penfold-Mounce, R. (2026) Cultivating a Death Network through Dark Academic and Pedagogical Events, in Stewart, H., Kennell, J. and P. Stone (eds) The Routledge Handbook of Dark Events: Celebrations, Heritage, and Customs of Death and the Macabre.
  • Penfold-Mounce, R. (2024) Foreword. In S. Coleclough, B, Michael-Fox and R, Visser (Eds) Difficult Death, Dying and the Dead in Media and Culture. Springer
  • Penfold-Mounce, R., (2023). Walking, Public Engagement, and Pedagogy: Mobile Death Studies. In The Routledge Handbook of Museums, Heritage, and Death (pp. 416-427). Routledge.
  • Penfold-Mounce, R. (2020) ‘Celebrity Deaths and the Thanatological Imagination’ in Teodorescu, A. and Jacobsen, M.H. (eds.) Death in Contemporary Popular Culture, UK: Routledge.
  • Penfold-Mounce (2019) ‘Mortality and culture. Do death matters matter?’ in Holmberg, T., Jonsson, A. and Palm, F. (eds.) Death Matters: Cultural Sociology of Mortal Life, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.
  • Penfold-Mounce, R. (2018) Death, the Dead and Popular Culture, Bingley: Emerald Publishing.
  • Reed, D. and Penfold-Mounce, R., (2014) ‘The Walking Dead as Social Science Fiction’, in Hubner, L., Leaning, M. and Manning, P. (eds.) Zombie Renaissance, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.
  • Penfold-Mounce, R. (2009) Celebrity Culture and Crime: The Joy of Transgression, London: Palgrave Macmillan.

Journal Articles

  • Penfold-Mounce, R. and Michael-Fox, B., (2025). Public engagement, pedagogy and edgework in death studies: Ruth Penfold-Mounce in conversation with Bethan Michael-Fox. Mortality, pp.1-17.
  • Murrell, A.J., Jamie, K. and Penfold-Mounce, R., (2021). ‘It was the easiest way to kind of announce it’: exploring death announcements on social media through a dramaturgical lens. Mortality, pp.1-18.
  • O’Neill, M., Penfold-Mounce, R., Honeywell, D., Coward-Gibbs, M., Crowder, H., & Hill, I. (2021). Creative methodologies for a mobile criminology: Walking as critical pedagogy. Sociological Research Online, 26(2), 247-268. Shortlisted for the SAGE Prize for Excellence and Innovation.
  • Penfold-Mounce, Ruth. (2019) 'Value, Bodily Capital, and Gender Inequality after Death', Sociological Research Online (2019). Awarded the SAGE Prize for Excellence and Innovation.
  • Manning, N., Penfold-Mounce, R., Loader, B.D., Vromen, A. and Xenos, M (2017) ‘Politicians, celebrities and social media: a case of informalisation?’ Journal of Youth Studies, 20(2), pp.127-144.
  • Penfold-Mounce, R. (2016) Corpses, popular culture and forensic science: Public obsession with death. Mortality, 21(1), pp.19-35.
  • Penfold-Mounce, R. (2015) Conducting frivolous research in neoliberal universities: what is the value of glossy topics? Celebrity studies, 6(2), pp.254-257.
  • Penfold-Mounce, R., Beer, D. and Burrows, R. (2011) ‘The Wire as Social Science Fiction?’ Sociology, vol.45 (1), pp. 152-167.
  • Penfold-Mounce, R (2010) ‘Consuming Criminal Corpses’ Mortality, vol.15 (3), pp. 250-265.
  • Beer, D. and Penfold-Mounce, R. (2010) Researching glossy topics: the case of the academic study of celebrity, Celebrity Studies, vol.1 (3), pp. 360-365.
  • Beer, D. and Penfold-Mounce, R. (2009) ‘Celebrity Gossip and the Melodramatic Imagination’, Sociological Review Online, vol.14 (2/3)

Other Publications

External Engagement

Overview

Ruth draws on her research background as a consultant and contributor to:

Radio

  • Episode 4 and 5 of Gangster Presents...The story of Ronnie Biggs (Radio 5, June 2026)
  • All in the Mind with Claudia Hammond - High Profile Death and Grieving (Radio 4, 2024)
  • Interviewed by John Pienaar on Postmortem Memory of Public Figures (Times Radio Today, 2021)
  • The Digital Human with Aleks Krotoski on Authenticity (Radio 4 Award Winning Technology Series, 2017)
  • Interviewed by Doon Mackichan on Body Count Rising (Radio 4, 2016)

Television 

  • Krays London Gangsters. Amazon Prime (Woodcut Media). Broadcast July 2025
  • The Crossbow Cannibal. Amazon Prime (Woodcut Media). Broadcast July 2025
  • As it Happened Documentary Series (Wildbear Entertainment, Australia). Broadcast 2023
  • History By Numbers Documentary SEries (Saloon Media, Canada). Broadcast 2023
    • Episode 2: Crime
    • Episode 3: Royals
    • Episode 5: Fame and Scandal
  • The Hairy Bikers' Pubs that Made Britain: The Blind Beggar Pub (BBC2). Broadcast 2016

Contact details

Professor Ruth Penfold-Mounce
Department of Sociology LMB/210
University of York
UK
YO10 5GD

Tel: +44(0)1904 32 3045

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