Dr Laura Hodsdon

Associate Professor in Heritage, Culture & Society

Dr Laura Hodsdon is Associate Professor in Heritage, Culture & Society, working on social geographies of heritage and landscape with particular interest in social justice, participation, and what heritage means to different people:

  • Intangible cultural heritage and the sociology and ethics of participation
  • European national minorities and cultural heritage
  • Heritage values and how different people engage with material heritage
  • Discourses of/in sites and landscapes, power and privilege
  • Missing or hidden heritage stories
  • Diversity and inclusion in rural landscapes

She leads Falmouth's Centre for Heritage, Culture & Society, an interdisciplinary research centre that uses a critical lens to produce impactful research about people’s relationships with past, present and future places and landscapes. She was recently Project Lead/UK Principal Investigator on Re:voice, a Joint Programming Initiative on Cultural Heritage/AHRC-funded research project exploring the dynamics and ethics of participation by different groups in national minority cultures’ intangible cultural heritage. The results of this research were published in Routledge's Critical Heritages of Europe series, in an edited volume 'Revoicing Intangible Cultural Heritage: Perspectives from the Margins of Europe' in June 2025. She is also currently Co-Applicant on a British Academy Knowledge Frontiers project: Intangible: Understanding the socio-cultural dimensions of island population change in Scotland, England, Canada and Japan.

After a BA in English Literature at the University of York and PhD in Classics at the University of Leeds, she worked in various policy research roles at the Higher Education Academy (now AdvanceHE) before becoming a policy advisor at the University of Oxford specialising in race and gender equality, implicit bias, and professional development for research staff. She's also an ILM Level 5 certified coach. She joined Falmouth University in Spring 2018.

External Links

Associate Professor in Heritage, Culture & Society

Contact details

Email Laura.Hodsdon@falmouth.ac.uk

    Qualifications

    Qualifications

    Year Qualification Awarding body
    2008 PhD in Classics University of Leeds
    2007 MA in Classical Civilisation University of Leeds
    2004 BA in English Literature University of York

    Membership of external committees

    Cornwall FA Inclusion Advisory Group, AHRC Peer Review College

    Research Interests

    Research interests and expertise

    I work on social geographies of heritage and landscape with particular interest in social justice and what heritage means to different people: 

    • Intangible cultural heritage and the sociology and ethics of participation
    • European national minorities and cultural heritage
    • Heritage values and how different people engage with material heritage
    • Discourses of/in sites and landscapes, power and privilege
    • Missing or hidden heritage stories
    • Diversity and inclusion in rural landscapes

    Falmouth University Research Repository

    You can discover and explore all of Dr Laura Hodsdon's research outputs on the Falmouth University Research Repository (FURR). 

    FURR is an online showcase which stores, preserves, and shares all research material produced by Falmouth University's researchers, ensuring that it is available to the widest possible audience. It is an open resource, available globally, and where possible, items are freely available to view and download by anyone with an internet connection. 

    Falmouth University Research Repository | Dr Laura Hodsdon

    Research Outputs

    Publications and research outputs

    • Hodsdon, Laura

      Riviere, Sarah, (2025), Locating Tranquillity: Opportunities for Landscape Management and Accessibility, Item availability may be restricted.

    • Hodsdon, Laura and Koreinik, Kadri

      (2025), Heritage discourse and voices of change, In: Revoicing Intangible Cultural Heritage: Perspectives from the Margins of Europe, Routledge, London, ISBN: 9781003459149

    • Semley, Natalie

      Hodsdon, Laura, (2025), Negotiations and co-creations in the resourcing of intangible cultural heritage events, In: Revoicing Intangible Cultural Heritage, Routledge, London, pp. 191-204, ISBN: 9781032597294, Item availability may be restricted.

    • Hodsdon, Laura, Ernštreits, Valts, Moenandar, Sjoerd-Jeroen and Koreinik, Kadri

      (2025), Revoicing cultural landscapes, In: Revoicing Intangible Cultural Heritage: Perspectives from the Margins of Europe, Routledge, London, ISBN: 9781003459149

    • Hodsdon, Laura

      (2025), Revoicing intangible cultural heritage, In: Revoicing Intangible Cultural Heritage: Perspectives from the Margins of Europe, Routledge, London, ISBN: 9781003459149, Item availability may be restricted.

    • Hodsdon, Laura, Ozoliņa, Lolita and Zijlstra, Antine

      (2025), Rules of engagement at intangible cultural heritage events, In: Revoicing Intangible Cultural Heritage: Perspectives from the Margins of Europe, Routledge, London, ISBN: 9781003459149

    • Frears, Lucy

      Hodsdon, Laura, (2025), Taking up space, In: Revoicing Intangible Cultural Heritage: Perspectives from the margins of Europe, Routledge, Oxford, New York, pp. 145-158, ISBN: 978-1-032-59729-4

    • Hodsdon, Laura and Moenandar, Sjoerd-Jeroen

      (2025), ‘Torches aloft’ to Glastonbury, In: Revoicing Intangible Cultural Heritage: Perspectives from the Margins of Europe, Routledge, London, ISBN: 9781003459149

    • Hodsdon, Laura

      (2025), Revoicing Intangible Cultural Heritage, Routledge, London, ISBN: 9781032597294, Item availability may be restricted.

    • Hodsdon, Laura

      (2024), Landscape, discourse, and identity across the borders of European national minority cultures, In: 30th Jubilee Session of the Permanent European Conference for the Study of the Rural Landscape (PECSRL), 9-15 September 2024, Lublin & Zamość, Poland

    • Frears, Lucy

      Hodsdon, Laura, (2023), Insiders and outsiders researching insiders and outsiders by Lucy Frears & Laura Hodsdon, In: Symposium: Re:voicing Cultural Landscapes Narrative and Non-narrative traditions across media - part of: Heritage, Identity and Inclusivity Leeuwarden Summer School in collaboration with the Heritage Lab, 3rd - 7th July 2023, Leeuwarden, the Netherlands

    • Hodsdon, Laura

      (2022), Hidden in plain sight: Local narratives, authorised discourses, and a First World War seaplane base, In: 43rd Theoretical Archaeology Group conference, 15-17 December 2022, University of Edinburgh

    • Tattersall, Felicity

      Hodsdon, Laura, (2023), Re:voice archive database, (Unpublished), Item availability may be restricted.

    • Hodsdon, Laura

      (2023), ‘Absences’, in Shakespeare E and MacMillan V (eds) Sensing the Land

    • Blonska, Agnieszka

      Hodsdon, Laura, Frears, Lucy, Vautier, Gabby, Megaw, Neal, Tanner, Steve, Impossible Producing and Tate St Ives, (2023), Re:Voice, In: Re:Voice, 29.04.2023, Tate Gallery, St Ives

    • Christman, Kate

      Hodsdon, Laura, (2023), The Bee Brick: building habitat for solitary bees, In: International Journal of Sustainable Design, Inderscience Publishers, Online and print, Vol.4 (No.3/4), pp. 285-304, ISSN: 1743-8284

    • Hodsdon, Laura

      (2021), “Picture perfect” landscape stories: normative narratives and authorised discourse, In: Landscape Research, Taylor & Francis, London, 47 (2), pp. 271-284

    • Hodsdon, Laura

      (2021), Visitors’ discursive responses to hegemonic and alternative museum narratives: a case study of Le Modèle Noir, In: Critical Discourse Studies, Taylor & Francis, London, 19 (4), pp. 401-417, ISSN: 1740-5904

    • Hodsdon, Laura

      (2019), ‘I expected … something’: imagination, legend, and history in TripAdvisor reviews of Tintagel Castle, In: Journal of Heritage Tourism, Taylor and Francis, UK, 15 (4), pp. 410-423, ISSN: 1743-873X

    • Rofe, Michael

      Hodsdon, Laura, (2017), Experiencing Online Orchestra - Communities, Connections and Music-Making through Telematic Performance, In: Journal of Music, Technology and Education, Intellect Ltd, UK, 10 (2-3), pp. 257-276, ISSN: 17527066

    Externally funded research grants information

    Collaborators Currency Funder HESA Category Project title Value Year ending Year starting

    University of Groningen, University of Latvia, and University of Tartu

    		 € Joint Programming Initiative on Cultural Heritage/AHRC Re-voicing Cultural Landscapes: Narratives, Perspectives, and Performances of Marginalised Intangible Cultural Heritage 608,374 2023 2021

    National Trust

    		 Landscape Research Group Landscape Stories: an investigation of organisations’ and diverse audiences’ narratives of the countryside to advance landscape justice 2021 2020

    James Hutton Institute, Scotland’s Rural College, University of Prince Edward Island, Canada, Hiroshima University, Japan, Akita University, Japan, Hokkaido University, Japan

    		 British Academy Intangible 2024

    Research Students

    Current research students

    Please get in touch if you're interested in undertaking PhD study in any of the following areas:

    • Intangible cultural heritage, particularly relating to minoritised communities
    • Implicit (unconscious) bias, privilege and power
    • Discourse and normative policy and practice, particularly in heritage or organisational contexts
    • Equal and inclusive representation and experience in the workplace

    Business Engagement

    Consultancy and facility services

    I am an Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion Associate for AdvanceHE.