Karen Ray

Karen is a qualified planner and landscape/environmental specialist. She is a core member of the teaching team in the Department of Planning and its flagship Masters in Planning and Sustainable Development (M.Plan). Following on from a B.A. in English and Geography, she became a graduate of the foundation MPlan class in 2008 and has since worked in both academic and professional practice. After completing the first doctoral degree in Planning and Sustainable Development at UCC, she worked as a planning and landscape/environmental consultant in the multi-disciplinary built environment firm Brady Shipman Martin, working on large-scale projects for public and private sectors. Throughout the years, Karen has been involved in a wide range of projects throughout Ireland from strategic contexts to detailed design. 

Since 2011, and continuing while in professional practice, Karen has contributed to teaching and research in the Department of Planning and was involved in the development of a separate MA in Landscape, Built Heritage and Design. Karen holds professional corporate membership of both the Irish Planning Institute and the Irish Landscape Institute.

Karen has a livelong and active involvement in the arts in Ireland, and in more recent years, within the UCC community through The UCC Players staff drama group, directing, producing, writing, singing and acting within highly successful productions for campus and beyond. She has been a key driver in bringing highly-regarded, sell-out productions to UCC, including Agatha Christie's Murder on the Nile (2019), Willy Russel's Educating Rita (2022), and Let's Go to the Movies (2023) which brought together staff, alumni, students, and members of the wider community in Cork and beyond for immersive live theatre in the beautiful Aula  Maxima. The theme of continuing education was central to Educating Rita, with the production shining a spotlight on opportunities for continuing education in UCC through UCC Access and ACE, as well as the work of Cork Learning Neighbourhoods.

Karen has simultaneously performed in a number of historical works within and outside of UCC, including Tg4's Scealta Grá na hEireann (Kitty Kiernan), as a soloist as part of 100 Years of Women, in the Aula Maxima, attended by First Lady Sabina Higgins and ministers, and in Women’s Voices in Ireland’s History in UCC’s Devere Hall - both written & directed by Dr Finola Doyle O'Neill.

Karen’s research interests mainly relate to planning education, planning and management of landscape change, landscape and visual assessment, landscape sensitivity and capacity; environmental management and assessment; landscape and place values; natural resource management (incl. renewable energy); natural heritage management, planning in coastal environments; planning on islands; conflict and power relations in the planning arena. 

Karen completed the first doctoral thesis in planning at UCC, entitled: Landscape and Planning: Strengthening Discussions in the Decision-Making Process. It explored how landscape/landscape issues are manifest in real-world day-to-day planning processes at different scales, from routine applications/appeals and major cases, to Landscape Character Assessments & Strategic Environmental Assessments as part of development plans. It outlined new approaches for improving decision-making in practice, as well as for teaching within university settings and CPD training of planning professionals in both public and private sectors. 

Karen is currently project-lead for a large EPA-funded project on Determining environmental impacts on landscape - understanding landscape sensitivity in assessment of strategic plans and programmes. She is supported by colleagues and research assistants in the Department of Planning, with this 18-month project due to be completed in Autumn 2027. The research is also aligned with the Sustainability Institute.

Karen has also been joint-researcher with project lead, Jeanette Fitzsimons for a UNIC funded project on compact growth and urban density, for which she and Jeanette recently travelled to Malmo (Feb 2026) to workshop with colleagues on the project. 

Karen is deeply committed to the quality of education and the preparedness of genuinely reflective graduates for the workforce. Her main teaching is on the two-year accredited M.Plan (and PGDip - not accredited). Her teaching interests relate to urban and rural landscape character and sensitivity; landscape and place values; planning for all types and scales of landscape change; environmental assessment (EIA, SEA, AA and visual impact assessment); planning for natural resources (extractive industry, forestry, renewable energy); planning for nature and biodiversity (especially in cities); observation, communication and drawing skills. She also teaches and coordinates an undergraduate introduction-to-planning module for Applied Social Studies.

In 2020 Karen received an AESOP award for Excellence in Teaching for her landscape module, coming a close second in a European-wide competition. She subsequently detailed the theoretical rationale and practical applications of the module in a paper, Embedding Landscape into the Education of Young Planners, published in AESOP's Transactions journal in 2022.

Over the years she has contributed to teaching in other departments, including Geography, Applied Social Studies, Engineering, and for Adult Continuing Education. She has co-supervised masters research in the Department of Geography, and continually shares the supervision of M.Plan dissertations and research papers. 

Karen was instrumental in establishing the first doctoral research students (2024) in the Department of Planning since her own PhD.