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Nationality: UK
Thesis: Precarious housing futures and the neoliberal city: Learning from new narratives of expulsion and resistance in London and Colombo
Key Topics: displacement; regeneration; comparative urbanism
Profile:
Having originally studied History, in 2011 I read Urban Development Planning at the Bartlett Development Planning Unit (DPU), University College London (UCL). Graduating in 2012, my subsequent work has predominantly focussed on efforts to defend and extend affordable housing options in cities of the Global South. Beyond this, I have also practiced as an urban planner, designer and policy-maker for public and private sector organisations in the UK.
For the past two years, I have been engaged as a Teaching Fellow and Graduate Teaching Assistant at the DPU, working with MSc student groups to explore the practice of urban development planning in rapidly transforming and increasingly unequal cities worldwide (DEVP0009) as well as the practicalities of supporting alternative housing solutions for marginalised groups and individuals (DEVP0009). My PhD research draws on both my professional and, in particular, teaching experience.
My research project proposes a comparative exploration of ‘expulsion’ as an increasingly dominant mode of urbanisation in London and Colombo. Engaging with how ‘expulsion’ is imposed (on), experienced and resisted by inhabitants of the literal and figurative periphery, it asks what the emergence of ‘everyday expulsion’ says about the reconfiguration of housing rights in the neoliberal city; and how ‘expulsion’ can be contested within existing and emerging logics of world-class city making?
In my spare time I enjoy cycling, climbing and cooking.
Primary supervisor: Dr. Barbara Lipietz
Secondary Supervisor: Mr Jorge Fiori
Web profiles:
@tiwickson