The Bartlett Research Conversations

Find out more information about this week's speakers below: 

Tom Keeley

Alternative Arrangements: A Topography Along, Across and Into the Irish Borderlands

Supervisors: Jane Rendell and Barbara Penner

Tom’s research produces an alternative reading of the Irish borderlands, as the centenary of Partition approaches and the UK leaves the European Union. Tom aims to draw out a contested history; to understand the characteristics of, and relationships between, architectures, landscapes and geographies of the Irish borderlands and their histories, both official and unofficial.

Four movements – along, across, into, and among the border – break down Tom’s research into different ways of seeing, experiencing, documenting and being in the border. Through this framework, he seeks to understand how the architectures and landscapes of the Irish borderlands tell the story of its past and inform the present. 

Through walking, site-specific writing, photography, field notes, oral histories, topographies, public events and publishing, Tom aims to produce an alternative arrangement of the boundaries between the historian, viewer, and the historical object. He explores the spatial qualities of writing about place, moving not only along and across the border but into it.

• Visit Tom's research profile

Diana Salazar

An Environmental History of La Guajira: Exploring How Networks of Activist-Academic Solidarity Linking Colombia and the UK Resist Coal Extraction

Supervisors: Jane Rendell, Liza Griffin and Robert Biel

Diana’s research aims to build an environmental history of La Guajira, that connects local struggles of ethnic groups affected by coal extraction, to networks of solidarity between the UK and Colombia. She aims to produce an environmental history of La Guajira, from the 1970s, that is embedded in the history of the social struggles of communities affected by coal extraction from London-based mining multinationals. She also explores the role of networks of solidarity between the UK and Colombia in disrupting the violation of human and environmental rights produced by coal extraction.

Diana’s research is framed by her role as an activist-academic, in which her academic research links to her activist practice as part of an international network of solidarity. Her approach to environmental history derives from Indian and Latin American scholarship embedded in the history of social struggles, linking the protection of the environment to a strategy of subsistence. The fieldwork takes place between two countries, and is integrated with annual events organised by solidarity movements –an annual summer international delegation in Colombia, and an annual autumn Speakers’ Tour of mining-affected guests in London.

About The Bartlett Research Conversations

The Bartlett School of Architecture’s Research Conversations seminars comprise work-in-progress and upgrade presentations by students undertaking the MPhil/PhD Architectural Design and MPhil/PhD Architectural and Urban History and Theory. All current UCL staff and students are welcome to attend.

Held regularly throughout the academic year, the seminars are attended by the programme directors, Professor Jonathan Hill and Professor Sophia Psarra, PhD Coordinators, Dr. Nina Vollenbröker and Dr Sophie Read, and other PhD supervisors.

Lead image: International Solidarity Exchange. River Bruno in La Guajira and Meeting with the Durham Miners Association. 

Other image: Tom Keeley, ‘Vote Nadine (Derry, Doire), Fear (Fermanagh, Fear Manach)’