Profile

Biography

I am Director of the cross-faculty UCL Urban Laboratory research and teaching centre, and Associate Director of Research in history, theory and urbanism in the Bartlett School of Architecture. I was appointed as Lecturer in Architectural History and Theory in 2005.

As an urbanist and architectural historian I am interested in the decline and renewal of cities, and the visual cultures of urban change. My work focuses, in particular, on the architecture and representation of twentieth-century and contemporary London, and the history of contentious sites of ‘regeneration’.

I have acted as a reviewer of research articles and proposals for journals, public bodies and publishers such as the Journal of Historical Geography (2010); AHRC (2009); Architectural Theory Review (2007); Architectural Research Quarterly (2007); Journal of Architecture (2007); CEBE Transactions (2007); and Routledge (2006). I am a member of the Arts and Humanities Research Council Peer Review College (2012-). I previously served as Deputy Editor on the editorial board of CITY: analysis of urban trends, theory, policy, action (2001-2006). In 2004 I was co-recipient of an RIBA Research Trust Modern Architecture and Town Planning award.

I am a member of the steering committees of ‘Towers of London’, a project funded by UCL Beacon Bursaries for Public Engagement (2010-). I am an advisor to Dr Hilary Powell on her AHRC-funded Fellowship (2010-2013), ‘The critical pop-up book: Olympic sites and stories’. I previously acted as an advisor to the Centre for Education in the Built Environment’s Special Interest Group on Diversity in Architectural Education (2004-2006).

I have given talks and conference papers at a wide range of UK and international institutions. Recent examples include Erasmus Mundus Urban Lab+, TU Berlin; the International Forum on Doctoral Education in Europe, ENHSA, Riga, Latvia; University of Nicosia, Cyprus; Penn State University, USA; Harvard Graduate School of Design, USA; the Association of Geographers Annual Meeting, Las Vegas, USA; the Society of Architectural Historians, Pittsburgh, USA; and the University of Cape Town, Republic of South Africa, School of Architecture. I have also made appearances in media outlets such as Resonance FM (2009) and BBC Newsnight (2011).

Research Summary

I have been researching urban change for the past decade and have studied a wide range of architectural and spatial forms and conditions: from slums, sink estates and ghettoes, to industrial ruins, wastelands, red-light-zones, and infested dwellings. I am interested in the imaginaries of urban ‘blight’, cultural representations associated with ‘regeneration’, and the relationships between them. My work spans from early twentieth century slum clearances to the large-scale government and business-led regeneration campaigns of the 1990s and early 2000s. My interdisciplinary methods draw from my training in architectural history, art history, archaeology, and geography.

I am author of Remaking London: Decline and Regeneration in Urban Culture (IB Tauris, 2013) and co-editor of Dirt: New Geographies of Cleanliness and Contamination (IB Tauris, 2007, paperback 2012), and ‘Architecture and dirt’, special issue of the Journal of Architecture (2007), two anthologies that explore how knowledge about hygiene, and beliefs about dirt, have influenced the production of cities, architecture and space. I have published in a wide-range of journals and anthologies, such as Architectural Design (2010), Camera Constructs (2011), Critical Cities (2009), Ladies and Gents: Public Toilets and Gender (2009), The Politics of Making (2007), RIBA Journal (2007) and Urban Constellations (2011).

I am involved in collaborative research through projects such as:

Urban Pamphleteer, a series of pamphlets on key contemporary urban questions which I co-edit with Dr Rebecca Ross, Central Saint Martins, funded by UCL Grand Challenge of Sustainable Cities. 

Insect City, with Dr Matthew Beaumont (UCL English), a network built around a conference exploring relationships between insects and cities to be held at the Grant Museum of Zoology and Arup Phase 2 Gallery (October 2011).

Picturing Place (with graphic designer Rebecca Ross and art historian Mariana Mogilevich), an urban image-cataloguing project which critically explores the agency of images and image-production in processes of urban change: http://picturingplace.net/

I am Director of the UCL Urban Laboratory (2011-), a cross-faculty interdisciplinary centre for research and teaching on cities, and I previously served as Co-Director (2008-11), leading the research theme of ‘Urban landscape and design in the post-industrial metropolis’. I am a member of the UCL Executive Group leading the Grand Challenge of Sustainable Cities initiative: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/sustainable-cities/ and have contributed through leading events such as Cities Methodologies, an annual exhibition exploring innovative methodologies in urban research.

I am Associate Director of Research (2010-) in the Bartlett School of Architecture, and in this capacity I mentor staff and postgraduates in the preparation of funding applications and development of projects towards REF2014, and I serve on the Architecture Research Fund Committee. I was Research Coordinator between 2005 and 2010, during which period I helped prepare the School’s submission to RAE2008, which resulted in the top rating of 4* (‘world leading’). In these roles I have facilitated successful funding applications to the AHRC, the RIBA, Leverhulme Trust, University of London Central Research Fund, the Centre for Education in the Built Environment, and UCL’s Beacon Bursaries, Grand Challenges and Graduate School funds.

Research outputs

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

Research activities