Ben Campkin

Ben Campkin (BAHons MSc PhD) is Co-Director of the UCL Urban Laboratory and Lecturer in Architectural History and Theory at the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL, where he currently runs the BSc Architectural Studies degree, and teaches on the MA and PhD Architectural History & Theory programmes.

Ben is co-editor of Dirt: New Geographies of Cleanliness and Contamination (IB Tauris, 2007), an anthology exploring how knowledge about hygiene, and beliefs about dirt, have influenced the production of domestic, urban and rural environments. Other recent publications include 'Ornament from grime: the architectural "aesthetic of recycling" and the Gritty Brits', The Journal of Architecture 12(4) (2007); 'Bugs, bats, and animal estates', in Architectural Design: Territory, 2010, guest edited by David Gissen; and 'Down and Out in London? Photography and the Politics of Representing "Life in the Elephant"' in Mark Swenarton et al, (eds.), The Politics of Making (Routledge, 2007).

Ben has been researching urban decline and renewal since 2001. He is currently writing a cultural history of urban change in London, and investigating the relationships between housing conditions, bed bug infestations and reformers' rhetoric in 1930s London and New York. With Mariana Mogilevich and Rebecca Ross he has recently launched 'Picturing Place', an international research project investigating the agency of images in urban change (see http://picturingplace.net/).

Ben has given talks and conference papers at a wide range of UK and international institutions. Recent examples include 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.