Adaptable Suburbs

Prof Laura Vaughan has an extensive research track record of using space syntax technology to study the micro-scale of settlement form in relation to society, using a combination of spatial, social, historical and geographical research methods. She is a Professor of Urban Form and Society at the Bartlett, University College London and is a member of the UCL Space research group. This is one of only two UK research groups in any field to have received three consecutive UK Government Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council Platform Awards for internationally outstanding research (2000, 2004 and 2009). Prof Vaughan was elected a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society in 2005 and is a member of the International Space Syntax Steering Committee. She is a co-Director of the UCL Environment Institute, leading on the Migration and Settlement theme. She directs the Spatial Justice module on the MSc Advanced Architectural Studies (AAS) at the Bartlett and also lectures at various universities in the UK and abroad, including Queen Mary College, London and Bezalel Academy, Jerusalem, Israel. email | website

Professor Muki Haklay specialises in public access and use of Environmental Information; Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and Usability Engineering aspects of GIS; and societal aspects of GIS use – in particular, participatory mapping and Citizen Science. He is a Senior Lecturer in Geographical Information Science at the Department of Civil, Environmental and Geomatic Engineering, University College London, where he leads the Extreme Citizen Science (ExCiteS) group. He is an expert in Geographical Information Systems (GIS) and Geographical Information Science (GISc) and has worked extensively on acquisition, management and analysis of Geographical Information. He has extensive experience in interdisciplinary research, and is the director of the Chorley Institute – an interfaculty research centre at UCL that focuses on facilitating interdisciplinary research which can benefit from the use of geographical and spatial technologies. email | website

Dr Sam Griffiths is Lecturer in Urban Morphology and Spatial Theory at the Bartlett School of Graduate Studies, UCL. His principal research interest is in understanding the historical relationship between urban form and social activity, focusing particularly on the emergent spatialities of urban routines and rituals in industrial cities and London. He is the Course Director MSc Advanced Architectural Studies and a Co-Editor of the journal Urban Design International. He has worked as Research Fellow on the EPSRC's Towards Successful Suburban Town Centres project. email | website

Dr Victor Buchli is Reader in Material Culture and works on architecture, domesticity, the archaeology of the recent past, critical understandings of materiality and new technologies and the anthropology of sustainability and design. He also teaches on the UCL Urban Studies MSc and supervises on the MPhil/PhD programme at the Bartlett and serves on the Board of the Victoria and Albert/Royal College of Art MA History of Design Programme. He has conducted fieldwork in Russia, Britain and more recently in Kazakhstan. Concurrently he is starting new research in new materials and new technologies examining the rise of rapid manufacturing or 3-D printing. This research is part of a co-organised ESRC funded initiative entitled New Materials, New Technologies with Susanne Kuechler and Graeme Were in UCL Anthropology and Materials Sciences at Kings College London. More recently he has begun work as a member of the interdisciplinary Templeton Scholars Group on the origins of domesticity at the Neolithic site of Çatal Höyük in Turkey where he is examining long term culture change and processes of material iteration and innovation. email | website

Dr Claire Ellul is a lecturer in Geographic Information Science (GIS) in the Department of Civil, Environmental and Geomatic Engineering, UCL. Her principle research interests include spatial data infrastructures - combining spatial databases and data management and maximising data availability, use and reuse - particularly in the context of interdisciplinary academic projects. She is also researching methods to facilitate the teaching of GIS to users in disciplines where it is not commonly employed as a tool. As a lecturer on the MSc in Geographic Information Science, she focusses on the principles of GIS, spatial databases and web and mobile GIS. email | website

Patrick Rickles obtained an MSc in Geographical Information Science (GIS) in 2005 from UCL's department of Civil, Environmental and Geomatic Engineering and has spent the past 5 years in industry working for Software Engineering, Oil and Gas, and Urban Planning companies, expanding his knowledge on the practical application of GIS. In conjunction with the project, he is working on a PhD focusing on the aspects of geospatial data sharing in an interdisciplinary academic team. email

Ashley Dhanani is focusing on understanding the network properties of the social and spatial development of urban form. He is also interested in ideas about urban planning that permit the continued adaptation of urban space to changing social and economic demands through time. His undergraduate and postgraduate studies were completed at UCL where he studied for a BSc (Hons) in Geography and then completed a MSc in Geographic Information Science. Ashley will be working with community members from Loughton and High Barnet. email

 David Jeevendrampillai will be using anthropological methods to explore historical questions of the relationship between the transformation of the built environment, commerical development, movement patterns and social networks in suburbs space. His research takes a historical approach to ethnography to assemble a detailed account of socio-economic practices in suburban space over time. David has a BSc (Hons) Geography from University of Manchester and an MA Cultural Geography from RHUL. David will be working with community members from South Norwood and High Barnet. email | website

Ruthie Carlisle will be undertaking a commercial ethnography in order to understand how the built environment of a suburban high street in London interacts with patterns of human movement and the exchange activities that take place. Hoping to illustrate the interactions of business enterprises, social networks and body techniques through anthropological methods, she will also look at the possible effects of sociality on the suburban commercial landscape over time. Interested in the material culture of homegardens, narrative built environments and gendered space, Ruthie has particularly focused on the creation of the domestic and public aesthetics within these realms. Achieving a First Class BSc (Hons) in Anthropology from the University of Kent, she then completed an MA at King’s College, her masters dissertation being a visual ethnography of large art structures and how they are used to create spaces of mass-consumption and communality. Ruthie will chiefly be working with community members from Loughton. | email