​
MSc Urban Studies Alumni Newsletter
Welcome to the first MSc Urban Studies alumni newsletter! Since we began back in 2008, over 130 students from an impressive array of disciplinary, professional and geographical backgrounds have graduated from the programme. We are keen to keep in touch and learn what you’ve been up to, as well as to update you on ​
recent activities of staff and students at UCL. Any further news items or suggestions, do please drop us a line (​
urbanstudies@ucl.ac.uk​
)​
. Andrew Harris, Regan Koch (2008), Archie Davies (2014) and Yvette Lanting (2014) August 2015 In this newsletter: Current group Current teaching Staff News Alumni projects and activities Examples of recent alumni publications Examples of PhD research undertaken by alumni Survey data Further details Current group
In September 2014 we welcomed our biggest ever cohort of students. Again we’ve enjoyed an exciting mix of students from a diverse range of disciplines and countries with some impressive academic credentials and professional experience. We’ve been fortunate to have two alumni from our original 2008 group involved with the programme this year: Regan Koch, who has been an Urban Studies Teaching Fellow, and David Roberts, who has been a Teaching Assistant on the three core modules. Both have been crucial in setting the conceptual and critical agenda for the course and above all in making sure that an often challenging array of topics and approaches remain fun. 1 The 2014/15 group after the final ‘Urban Practices’ session in March We have organised several group outings beyond Bedford Way including a visit to Folkestone Triennial​
in November where curator Lewis Biggs met us for lunch (and we happened to be in town at the same time as then Culture Minister Sajid Javid was being shown round). We have also learnt about new plans for developing parts of the Barbican, have paid another visit to the nearby Brunswick Centre, and in May were lucky enough to be allowed down the 160 steps into Aldwych Station (which closed in 1994). We have also had several meetings with alumni including learning about the dissertation process (this year, thanks to Rebecca Payne (2013), Tom Denny (2013) and Anna Subirats (2011)), an interactive session on writing led by author Sarah Butler (2010) in March and an evening event about ​
Guardian Cities​
and urban journalism from Francesca Perry (2010) in June. Visit to Aldwych Station. Photo: Andrew Harris 2 In May, for the first time, MSc Urban Studies headed not only out of London but also out of the country. Thanks to funding from the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), we were able to visit Berlin for a week. This included trips around the city with past and present students as well participation in a workshop on the ‘Politics of practice­orientation’ organised as part of the ​
Urban Lab+ network​
. Please read Archie Davies’s ​
full write­up here​
. Staff and students at Ostkreuz event in Berlin. Image courtesy Jacob Nicholson Fairless (2014) Current teaching
We continue to offer a wide array of teaching and modules that reflect the broad spectrum of expertise connected to the UCL Urban Lab. Urban Practices (URBNG006) continues to explore the relations between the academic field of Urban Studies and ways that urban issues are addressed in practice. This year, however, the module, convened by Regan Koch, involved a novel twist: urban practitioners (including a few alumni) submitted project briefs that students had to address as part of a collaborative group. Students were involved in activities related to art and activism, protecting London’s green spaces, designing community engagement activities and professional development courses, researching public markets, studying 3 ways to protect small­scale industry, and re­enacting historical events. The organising theme was ‘Putting Urban Studies to work’, and while it certainly involved a great deal of work for everyone involved, it also led to some excellent projects and wonderful reflection pieces. If you are involved in an activity that could benefit from the interdisciplinary skills, creative insights, and critical acuity that MSc Urban Studies students develop, please do not hesitate to let us know about a project brief you might have in mind (urbanstudies@ucl.ac.uk) Selection of ‘Market Top Trumps’ from Urban Practices 2013, produced by ‘the Hammers’: Carmen Campeaunu, Charlie Clemoes, Tilly Fowler and Alice Sweitzer. Please see some maps from the London: Aspects of Change (URBNG009) module here ​
and work updating Patrick Keiller’s 1994 film London ​
here​
. There are also some examples of work from the Community Participation in City Strategies (URBNG005) here. Students are currently completing work on a series of exciting dissertation topics including social spaces on London council estates, young people’s experiences of regeneration in North London, market halls in Berlin, alternative tourism in Palestine, urban entrepreneurship in Indonesia, post­socialist architecture in Macedonia, informal 4 property regimes in Istanbul, educational policies in inner London, co­housing schemes for older people, reclamation in Singapore, commuter cyclists in Carlisle, spaces of solidarity in Athens, window practices in London, heritage tourism in Italy, swifts in Lisbon and the politics of diversity in Croydon. Staff News
Regan Koch​
will be joining Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) as Lecturer this autumn. A graduate of the first MSc Urban Studies cohort, Regan completed his PhD in Geography at UCL in 2013. Since then he has been helping to support the Urban Studies programme and convening courses including Urban Practices and Landscape & Power. This year Regan was also shortlisted for a Student Choice Teaching Award at UCL. At QMUL, he will continue to research matters of public space, urban sociality and culture, and the experience and imagination of life in cities. He also has a forthcoming volume, co­edited with Alan Latham, entitled ​
Key Thinkers on Cities​
to be published with SAGE in early 2016. Using her interdisciplinary training in architecture, planning and geography, ​
Pushpa Arabindoo​
has been conducting ethnographic investigations in the Indian city of Chennai, covering a range of issues from middle­class activism to slum evictions and resettlement. In addition to emphasising the need for researching understudied cities, she has more recently begun to reflect on the meta­theoretical implications of her investigations around the question of specificity of cities, and what kind of analytical conclusions one can draw from Chennai extending to the wider debates in urban studies. She is currently on maternity leave, enjoying her moments pampering Neelan Ethan Delage (b. 14.11.14), our latest Urban Studies addition. He has already hit the ground running, accompanying his mother to conferences and workshops across the globe! Urban Studies next generation Nick Phelps ​
has completed a number of separate research projects. ​
An Anatomy of Sprawl​
(Routledge, 2012) led on to research examining contemporary planning for 5 growth in South Hampshire, South Oxfordshire and the 'Gatwick Diamond' area with Dave Valler at Oxford Brookes University. He has also been consolidating British Academy and ESRC funded research into a new book ­ ​
Sequel to Suburbia​
(MIT Press, 2015) due to be published later this year. Most recently he has been working with Andy Wood at University of Kentucky on the economic geography of the site selection consulting industry and with colleagues at Universitas Diponegoro examining the economic geography of batik industry clusters in Central Java. Nick also helped to organise a two­day event and edit a volume in celebration of the work of the late Professor Sir Peter Hall published as ​
The Planning Imagination​
(Routledge, 2014). In 2014, he was Visiting Professor at the Universidad Catolica del Norte in Chile. Matthew Gandy’s​
new book ​
The fabric of space: water, modernity, and the urban imagination​
(MIT Press) has just been awarded the AAG Meridian Prize. Matthew has also published an essay collection ​
The acoustic city​
(edited with the sound artist BJ Nilsen) that features an accompanying CD. He has also started work on a new five­year project funded by the European Research Council entitled ​
Rethinking urban nature​
. He is currently busy making a documentary film in Berlin on the history of urban nature which will be one of the first outputs from this project. Ben Campkin​
and Andrew Harris are coordinating a number of events in London on 16 and 17 September as part of an EU­funded Urban Lab+ network of urban laboratories. These events will focus on global urban higher education and the challenges and potentials of internationalisation. All are welcome to attend the panel discussions on 16 September and the Symposium on 17 September. ​
Register here​
! Ben and Rebecca Ross (Central Saint Martins) are currently working with colleagues to finalise two issues of ​
Urban Pamphleteer. ​
One issue develops from the recent event ​
Open Source Housing Crisis​
convened to discuss the scope to use communication technologies to address London's housing crisis; and the other will bring together global approaches to urban higher education, featuring practice­oriented and interdisciplinary teaching. Ben’s book Remaking London: Decline and Regeneration in Urban Culture​
(IB Tauris, 2013) was awarded a commendation in the RIBA President's Awards for Research, university­located research category, 2014. Jane Rendell ​
writes​
: ​
I'm currently completing a new book ​
Transitional Spaces in Architecture and Psychoanalysis​
which is due to be published later this year. It is composed of three strands of enquiry: a psychoanalytic strand charts a particular set of ideas around transitional objects and spaces; an architectural strand examines transitional objects and spaces in terms of Moisei Ginzburg and Ignatii Milinis’s Narkomfin Communal House (1928–9) in ​
Moscow​
, whose design was influenced by Le 6 Corbusier’s early work, but which in turn inspired aspects of his​
​
Unité d'Habitation (1947–52) constructed in Marseilles thirty years later.​
​
Certain principles of the ​
Unité were then adopted and adapted in some of the public housing schemes built, following the Second World War, by the Welfare State in the United Kingdom, specifically the Alton West Estate in Roehampton, London (1954​
–8) designed by the London County Council. A third strand, located in a transitional space between psychoanalysis and architecture, gives voice to ​
May Morn​
, an arts and crafts house in London’s green belt and the decaying photographs of welfare state architecture from the 1950s I found there one morning in May. Some of the material was used to inform an expert witness statement for the ​
Public Inquiry into the Compulsory Purchase Orders on the Aylesbury Estate​
. I am also working on another site­writing, which concerns the politics and poetics of the extractive industries and engages directly with the divestment Fossil Free campaign. A performative lecture called ​
Configuring Critique​
tells of events that took place in 2013 when I questioned ​
UCL’s decision​
to accept $10 million of funding from the Anglo Australian multinational mining and petroleum company BHP Billiton to create an International Energy Policy Institute in Adelaide, and the Institute for Sustainable Resources in London at the Bartlett Faculty of the Built Environment. Michael Edwards​
has continued to work with ​
JustSpace.org.uk​
in which activist groups support each other in challenging —increasingly polarised and fraught—London Planning issues. He’s also been busy on a report commissioned by the Government Office for Science Foresight project on the future of cities in the UK. His report on the housing crisis as it will affect cities over the coming decades is ​
here​
. See societycould.woprdpress.com​
for news, download links and discussion. @michaellondonsf Andrew Harris ​
has been continuing his work on elevated ​
transport infrastructure​
in contemporary Mumbai with a variety of journal articles and book chapters published or on their way. This has included a ​
paper​
on ‘vertical urbanisms’ recently published in Progress in Human Geography and an ​
article​
in Guardian Cities. Andrew has also recently co­edited a ​
special issue ​
of Area with Susan Moore (UCL Planning) on sustainable cities and is currently writing about ‘engineering cities’ and working on projects in relation to Ruth Glass, and the ​
Shard​
. Alan Latham​
has been working on a number of projects looking at human movement in urban environments. This includes working on a research project funded by the Swedish Research Council on the landscapes of fitness running, as well as working on a contemporary history of aerobic fitness. He has also been editing a book with Regan 7 Koch entitled ​
Key Thinkers on Cities​
. This should be published by Sage early next year. @Citiesandstuff Charlotte Lemanski​
moved to the University of Cambridge in October 2014 where she continues to research issues related to everyday inequality in cities of the global South, with a particular empirical interest in South Africa. Her broad interest in re­defining the theoretical tools of global urbanism are articulated in her article “Hybrid gentrification in South Africa: Theorising across southern and northern cities”, which was awarded the best paper of 2014 by the Urban Studies journal ­ see the video ​
here​
.​
​
In addition, she recently co­edited a book with Colin Marx (from the DPU) entitled ​
The City in Urban Poverty​
(published by Palgrave­Macmillan in 2015), which critically explores the active role played by the spaces of the city in shaping and perpetuating urban poverty (rather than merely containing it). Looking ahead, she has recently been awarded funding for a new research project on materiality and citizenship (starting 2016), exploring how citizens' infrastructural and material experience of the city are connected to their citizenship perceptions and practices. In June 2015 Dr Lemanski was awarded the Royal Geographical Society's Gill Memorial Award for early­career achievement in urban geography. Richard Dennis’s​
retirement in 2014 was marked by two events reflecting Richard’s different areas of interest – a two­day conference on ‘Canadian Cities: Past into Present’, which is currently being reworked into a special issue of the British Journal of Canadian Studies, and a ‘London InSites’ symposium, linked to the launch of ‘​
Ramble London’​
, which immortalises some of his and other staff’s ‘urban walks’. Following his work on the early history of the London Underground (in London Journal (Nov. 2013), and in Carlos Galviz and Sam Merrill, eds., Going Underground (London Transport Museum, 8 2013)), Richard has written further papers on Gower Street [now Euston Square], c. 1880 (Richard Dennis’s collection) ‘Lighting the Underground’ (for publication in Histoire Urbaine, 2016) and on the Metropolitan Railway in World War I (for a conference at the IHR/Imperial War Museum), and is now moving onto buses [not literally, though the Freedom Pass is a great help!], including a paper on ‘The London Bus: An unlikely architecture of hurry’ for a series of papers on ‘Architectures of Hurry’ that he is organising for the International Conference of Historical Geographers in London in July 2015. He has also contributed essays to two books on Toronto. So, despite the official evidence, he hasn’t really retired. Alumni projects and activities
Francesca Perry (2010):​
Guardian Cities Guardian Cities is the Guardian's home for the discussion of the future of cities. As the world becomes increasingly urban, we want to open up the dialogue about cities to be as inclusive as possible. We share stories from both the bigger, well­known places as well as those smaller cities that might otherwise be overlooked in the media. My role focuses on community building and reader engagement, gathering and telling stories and experiences from people living in the cities we discuss. It's inspiring to hear personal stories from residents of diverse cities around the globe, and I love being able to share these with a wider audience on the site. We sometimes do week­long special features on cities too ­ from Moscow to Mumbai ­ where we spend time in a city collaborating with organisations and residents to really explore the reality of life there from a local perspective. You can find us at ​
theguardian.com/cities​
and on Twitter @guardiancities Sara Debevec (2008). ​
Theatre project in Berlin The Shells – Ausflug nach Neu­Friedenwald​
is an immersive theatre performance staged over eight days in June 2015. Inspired by David Lynch’s TV­drama Twin Peaks and coinciding with its 25­year anniversary, The Shells chronicles the unravelling of a picture­perfect American small town after a brutal murder. Due to the immersive nature of the production, audiences will be able to inhabit a role in the unfolding drama, engage directly with the town’s residents, and confront their own anxieties and sense of propriety in response to the action unfolding around them. David Roberts (2008) ​
Balfon Tower website David ​
has launched a ​
new website​
that collates his three years of doctoral work with current and former residents of Ernö Goldfinger’s Balfron Tower in Poplar, London. 9 balfrontower.org​
shares access to all the documents related to Balfron Tower that Roberts gathered over the course of his research. This is displayed in a timeline, from archival records during the tower’s design phase in the 1960s to the most recent press articles. These documents can be intimidating; difficult to access because they are hidden behind archival protocols, journal subscription costs and labyrinthine planning portals; or difficult to grasp because of bureaucratic, academic or legal language. For ease of understanding, the material is categorised under ten document types and filtered through a dozen questions. The responses to these questions reveal important information that has not yet been reported. It is hoped that the site may help contribute to an informed public debate on key issues before refurbishment works on the tower are laid out. A planning application for these works is due to be submitted shortly. It has been reported that, following the refurbishment, tenants on social rent will not be permitted to return to their flats in the tower. Kate de Syllas (2012) ​
Chapbooks Kate recently opened a small gallery in Margate where she is commissioning new work, including a series of contemporary chapbooks. The gallery's chapbook imprint has an interest in contemporary cartography and also critical theory with a leaning toward the urban. She is really interested to hear from anyone from the course who might be interested in talking about future commissions. The gallery is Hantverk & Found, 18 King Street, Margate CT9 1DA and Kate can be contacted on info@hantverk­found.co.uk Rene Boer (2011) ​
Failed Architecture Failed Architecture​
started off as a debate series in the modernist Trouw­building in Amsterdam when I was still enrolled in the Urban Studies MSc. When I returned to Amsterdam in the following year to work with various grass roots urban social movements, I discovered the Failed Architecture blog, which at the time wasn’t much more than a few articles. I was fascinated by FA’s nascent focus on the more socio­political, and sometimes even darker or dystopic sides of architecture and urbanism, and I volunteered to join the blog’s editorial team. Over the last two years, Failed Architecture has grown rapidly in terms of attention and popularity. It has become a well­known research collective with an interesting archive on urban and architectural failures. In the research, we aim to examine the societal context of these failures, how people perceive them and how they are represented to a wider public. Failed Architecture has also matured in terms of analysis, and has developed a variety of perspectives and methodologies. These have been applied in a series of travelling workshops, teaching assignments and research projects. We are now focusing on a 10 major event in 2017, about which we will publish soon on our website. See also the pieces by ​
Martha Mingay​
(2011) and ​
Charlie Clemoes​
(2013). Sarah Butler (2010) ​
Novels and writing projects Sarah’s second novel, ​
Before The Fire​
, was published by Picador in March 2015. It tells the story of a young man reaching adulthood on a north Manchester estate in the summer of 2011 as riots sweep across the UK. The novel is partly inspired by Sarah’s MSc dissertation about distance and proximity in narratives of the riots of 2011. Sarah’s first novel Ten Things I’ve Learnt About Love​
(Picador, 2013) has been described as a ‘love letter to London’, an intimate portrait of a homeless man and a rootless young woman in contemporary London. Sarah is also involved in a range of projects exploring the relationship between writing and urban space. Current projects include ​
Stories From The Road​
, a collaboration with University of Manchester, mapping Oxford Road through individual stories; ​
Unpicked:Restitched​
, a collaboration with arts organisation Arc and textile artist Julie Mosley, asking, Where is the heart of Stockport? and ​
Social Housing Arts Network ​
– a socially engaged arts project in Bolton, working with social housing provider Bolton At Home and recently arrived refugees. Nazia Parvez (2010) ​
Brightstar Media Nazia is the founding member of brightstarXD (NYC) and brightstar media (London), a consultancy which uses a design­based approach to create solutions that improve people’s lives, their environments, and experiences. Their methodology is built on engagement, co­creation and learning. They work with businesses in the public and private sector in the fields of healthcare, international development, urbanism, and the environment. Nazia’s clients include the UK National Health Service (NHS), Hirondelle USA, USAID/STEWARD, and UNICEF. Brightstar’s projects can be seen ​
here​
. 11 Examples of recent alumni publications
Regan Koch (2008)​
‘Licensing, popular practices and public spaces: an inquiry via the geographies of street food vending’ forthcoming in International Journal of Urban and Regional Research. Christian Haid (2010)​
‘​
Contentious Informalities: The Narratives of Picnicking at Berlin’s Thai Park’ article in dérive Craig Hatcher (2009) ​
‘​
Illegal geographies of the state: the legalisation of a “squatter” settlement in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan​
.’ International Journal of Law in the Built Environment (early cite online). In special issue on Law and Geography Hanna Hilbrandt (2011)​
'​
Reassembling Austerity Research​
', 2015, with A. Richter, Ephemera (15) 1, 163 –180. Franziska Schreiber (2012)​
​
Resilient Cities​
2014 5th Global Forum on Urban Resilience and Adaptation. In: Planet@Risk, 2(5), Special Issue for the Post­2015 Framework for DRR, Global Risk Forum GRF Davos, Davos, S. 318­323. Lucia Caistor­Arendar (2012)​
writing for Social Life exploring how people are affected by changes in the built environment. eg: ​
Design for Social Sustainability Yuriy Milevskiy (2008)​
has contributed to publications on human development in the urban environment. See ​
here​
and ​
here Examples of PhD research undertaken by alumni
See a longer list of PhD research by alumni ​
here Laura Marshall ​
(2013). ​
PhD at UCL​
supervised by Prof Anne Varley and Dr Ben Campkin. My PhD project develops my MSc Urban Studies dissertation research and uses qualitative methods including participant photography and semi­structured interviews to explore the experiences of transgender people living across the UK in relation to specific socio­spatial and geographical contexts. A critical engagement with certain strands of queer and gender studies, as well as phenomenology, inform a theoretical approach that is positioned in conversation with participants’ narratives in order to reveal and analyse points of resonance and tension that emerge. More 12 specifically I seek to explore and analyse ways in which transgender peoples' identities and embodied lived experiences are negotiated in relation to the contours of hegemonic heteronormative and cisnormative regimes that often (in)form the nature and content of socio­spatial relations. Antonio Nunes ​
(2008).​
​
PhD in Transportation Systems at University of Porto. Supervisor: Teresa Galvão Dias. Research topic: A user collaboration model for urban passenger transport. This thesis is concerned with the development and evaluation of a model of collaboration between users of urban passenger transport. The model explores the opportunity created by the widespread adoption of advanced personal mobile devices with ubiquitous access to wireless communication networks, to harness information that is distributed throughout urban passenger transport systems. Its ultimate goal is to improve utilisation of available resources to enhance travel experience, and to promote sustainable urban transport. Craig Hatcher ​
(2009). PhD: University of Zurich, School of Geography. PostDoc: Simon Fraser University, School of Geography (supervisor: Nicholas Blomley) and the Technische Universität, Berlin, School of Architecture (supervisor; Philipp Misselwitz). I am a ​
post­doctoral fellow​
at SFU and TU­Berlin researching property restitution in the post­conflict city, drawing specifically on the 2010 violent unrest in Osh, Kyrgyzstan. Trained as a lawyer and a geographer, my broader research interests are concerned with urban rights and justice (and the ‘right to the city’ discourse), informality and illegality, urban planning, and property law. I recently completed my PhD research on the relations between law, governance and post­socialist urban transformation in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, specifically focussing on the regulation of internal migration and the development of informal settlements (​
novostroikas​
, in Russian) on the urban periphery. Olga Petri ​
(2012).​
​
PhD at Geography Department,​
University of Cambridge, supervised by Philip Howell. Doctoral research focuses on questions of identity formation and their relationship to homosexual spatial practices in imperial St. Petersburg during the period from the Revolution of 1905 to the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. I am interested in, as I call it, 'queer modernity' during the time between two revolutions ­ when the political and social reforms contributed to a profound social transformation resulting in the reassessment of established social and gender norms and the formation of new attitudes towards non­traditional sexual practices. 13 Survey data
14 And thank you for your​
book recommendations​
for students on the course. Further details
Please join the ​
MSc Urban Studies LinkedIn page​
that Yvette has set up as well as the Facebook page​
. There’s also the ​
UCL Urban Lab twitter​
and the occasional ​
StadtKlang music nights in London. If you have any information (e.g. research opportunities, internships etc.) you would like to send to the alumni email list, please email urbanstudies@ucl.ac.uk and we will forward them on. As ever, please recommend the programme and forward our website link to those who might be interested: ​
www.ucl.ac.uk/urbanstudies 15