Dr Rosemary Shirley’s research centres on cultural representations of rural places and she has published widely on this subject including: Rural Modernity, Everyday Life and Visual Culture (Routledge) and Creating the Countryside: The Rural Idyll Past and Present (Paul Holberton). She is an Associate Professor in the School of Museum Studies at the University of Leicester and also works on curatorial projects, most recently Everywhere: Life in a Littered World an exhibition exploring artistic responses to litter and pollution. She was a research partner in The Rural: Contemporary Art and Spaces of Connection led by Whitechapel Gallery and her writing was included in the Documents in Contemporary Art edition: Rural (Whitechapel/MIT Press). She is currently writing a book about contemporary art and rural places, and a collection of creative and critical essays that takes the Midlands region of the UK as lens through which to explore contemporary rurality.