Annual Report 2011/2012
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UCL Urban Laboratory ANNUAL REPORT 2011-2012 5 3 1 Image: Gynna Millan 2 4 Image: Gynna Millan 5 Contents 1___________ FOREWORD AND ENDORSEMENTS 4 2___________ ABOUT US 5 3___________ PEOPLE 6 4___________ ACTIVITY AREAS 10 5___________ RECENT AND CURRENT PROJECTS 11 6___________ VISITING RESEARCHERS 20 7___________ URBAN STUDY AT UCL 22 8___________ COMMUNICATIONS 28 9___________ LINKS 29 10__________ REGULAR EVENTS 30 11__________ OTHER EVENTS 39 12__________ PUBLICATIONS 46 13__________ FINANCE - SUMMARY 50 14__________ CONTACTS 51 3 1 5 Foreword and Endorsements At UCL we are committed to harnessing our collective expertise to maximize our impact on the world’s major problems. We recognize that our university can only address the complex challenges by transcending the boundaries between academic disciplines, bringing together the creative perspectives and procedures of our academic specialities. In this regard, we have committed our research to a series of key initiatives, the Grand Challenges of Global Health, Sustainable Cities, Intercultural Interaction and Human Wellbeing. The UCL Urban Laboratory makes a crucial contribution to this effort and is a thriving example of this philosophy in action: it is a fertile environment where the expertise and analysis of diverse disciplines interact, producing novel understandings of the systemic issues facing cities. Drawing on the wealth of expertise at UCL, it develops productive spaces for innovative methods of urban research to emerge and be nurtured. In concert with two other institutes in which we have invested, the UCL Environment Institute and the UCL Energy Institute, the UCL Urban Laboratory is critical to our development of a compelling vision for the world’s cities and their inhabitants. Engagement beyond UCL has become a key aspect of its work; it has forged strong partnerships with community organisations in London and internationally, and now collaborates with a wide network of urban laboratories worldwide. Professor David Price, UCL Vice-Provost (Research) By their nature cities are complex. The interrelationship between urban form, urban culture, the urban economy and the resources on which cities depend, demands expertise that goes beyond individual scholars and their disciplines and professions. The richness of the UCL Urban Laboratory is that it offers the critical mass for taking the study of the city to the next level. Some of the world’s leading urbanists are actively involved in the work of the Urban Laboratory. There is also an extraordinary collective depth of knowledge, not only about London, but also about cities across the world. Professor Susan Parnell, African Centre for Cities, University of Cape Town As Director of the UCL Urban Laboratory I am delighted to present our annual report for 2011-2012. Its content reflects the hard work and dedication of many people across UCL, as well as our growing range of partnerships beyond the academy. The projects featured evidence an array of critical, experimental and rigorous research and teaching activity within the university, and a wide range of productive collaborations with other communities. Dr Ben Campkin, Director of the UCL Urban Laboratory 4 2 5 About us The inspiration for the UCL Urban Laboratory originated from discussions between geography and architecture in the summer of 2004 which quickly drew in colleagues from other fields such as anthropology, engineering, film studies, planning and urban sociology. The UCL Urban Laboratory was created as a focal point for emerging ideas and research agendas at UCL and has brought together a growing circle of scholars, students and practitioners from across the physical and environmental sciences, the social sciences and the arts and humanities. Our mission is to encourage thinking and research that is critical, independent and crossdisciplinary. Our work is also international in its scope, and seeks to foster new intellectual dialogues between the global north and the global south. Since its formal establishment in 2005 the UCL Urban Laboratory has undertaken a range of activities including: • Launching and maintaining a website • Attracting research funding from that has become an important point diverse sources for inter-faculty exchange and public outreach for UCL’s urban work, • Establishing links outside the academy and which was launched with a fresh look and added interactivity in • Raising the profile of UCL’s urban December 2012 work within London and the UK, and internationally, through building a • Developing a vibrant culture for urban network of international partners work, bringing together a community of scholars, postgraduate and research • Establishing the highly successful MSc students, and visiting researchers Urban Studies, an advanced interdisci- plinary urban studies programme • Establishing a number of regular seminar, lecture and workshop • Attracting high quality graduate programmes, as well as one-off research students working on conferences and symposia, and a urban topics popular programme of public events 5 5 About us 3 5 People The director of the UCL Urban Laboratory is Ben Campkin, and Laura Hirst is the Urban Laboratory Administrator. In 2011-12 a Directors’ Advisory Group was established, which now meets once per term. The membership is as follows. An asterisk indicates new Co-Directors appointed in 2011-12. *Dr Pushpa Arabindoo, Geography, Co-Director *Dr Matthew Beaumont, English, Co-Director *Dr Sarah Bell, Engineering, Co-Director (2012-13 onwards) *Dr Camillo Boano, DPU, Co-Director and Director of the MSc Building and Urban Design in Development Dr Ben Campkin, Chair, Director of the UCL Urban Laboratory Dr Ger Duijzings, SSEES, Co-Director Dr Andrew Harris, Geography, Co-Director and Director of the MSc Urban Studies *Professor Jenny Robinson, Geography, Co-Director The number of Co-Directors has increased from three to five in 2011-12, and will increase to six in 2012-13, in order to better represent different areas of UCL’s urban work. New appointments have strategically connected the Urban Laboratory to the Faculty of Arts and Humanities, the English Department’s Cities Centre, the Development Planning Unit within the UCL Bartlett Faculty of the Built Environment, and UCL Engineering. Our Steering Committee, which includes colleagues from four faculties (The Bartlett; Engineering; Social and Historical Sciences; Arts and Humanities), meets once a month during term time, and comprises the following membership, with new appointments in 2011-12 marked with an asterisk. Dr Pushpa Arabindoo (Geography), *Dr Matthew Beaumont (English), Senior Lecturer in Geography and Urban Lecturer in English. Dr Beaumont’s Design. Dr Arabindoo is a specialist in the research interests currently centre on vari- fields of urbanization, public space and ous aspects of the metropolitan city. He is political activism in India, and is also a in the early stages of writing a book about practicing designer in the UK. nightwalking in cities, provisionally entitled Midnight Streets. 6 Dr Sarah Bell (Engineering) Senior photography, the uses of images in urban Lecturer in Civil and Environmental change, and the history of housing in Lon- Engineering. Dr Bell’s research inter- don, and representations of urban decline. ests lie in the relationships between engineering, technology and society Dr Claire Colomb (Bartlett School of as they impact on sustainability, par- Planning), Senior Lecturer in Urban ticularly in relation to water systems. Sociology and European Spatial Planning. As a sociologist and urban Dr Camillo Boano (Development planner, Dr Colomb’s research interests Planning Unit), Senior Lecturer in span urban governance, policies and Development Studies and Disaster politics, European spatial planning, and urban sociology. Risk Reduction. Dr Boano’s interests are focused on urban development, contested Professor Richard Dennis (Geography), urbanism, socio-spatial dialectics, design Professor of Human Geography. and urban transformations, and shelter Professor Dennis’s current research focuses and housing reconstruction in geographies on cultural-historical geographies of intra- of the global south. He is working on a se- urban transportation, with particular ries of interconnected research projects in reference to the London Underground; South East Asia and the Middle East aim- literary representations of urban life, with ing to recalibrate design through dissensus. particular reference to George Gissing and nineteenth-century London; and flats Professor Iain Borden (Bartlett School of and apartments in London, Toronto and Architecture), Director of Architectural Montreal, 1870-1930. History & Theory and Vice-Dean of Communications (Bartlett Faculty Dr Adam Drazin (Anthropology), of the Built Environment). Professor Lecturer in Anthropology. Dr Drazin Borden is currently researching large- works on design and with designers scale architectural and urban spaces in and currently runs the MA programme cities worldwide, from the Limehouse in Culture, Materials and Design. He Link tunnel in London to the Singapore aims to promote the broad spectrum of Flyer observation wheel in Singapore, and ways in which anthropology engages interpreting these as ways of experiencing with design and materials, and explore different postmodern conditions. how dialogues with institutions in the private and public sectors can advance *Dr Victor Buchli (Anthropology), anthropological understandings. Reader in Material Culture. Dr Buchli works on architecture,