The Bartlett School of Architecture Welcomes New Just Environments Cluster

Last year, The Bartlett School of Architecture launched a groundbreaking recruitment campaign, advertising five new positions to attract experts in spatial and climate justice to join the academic staff. This approach, known as 'cluster hiring’, involves recruiting multiple faculty members around a shared theme to enhance collaboration and diversity – and marks the first initiative of its kind for UK architectural higher education.
    
Following a rigorous selection process, we are delighted to welcome our successful candidates to join us as we begin the 2024–25 academic year. Their arrival is a significant step toward advancing education and research and creating a better, fairer built environment.

Our new cluster hires

• Thomas Aquilina, Co-Director of Spatial Justice 
• Janine Francois, Director of Climate Justice
• Lidia Gasperoni, Co-Director of Design
• Mohamad Hafeda, Co-Director of Ethics
• Mpho Matsipa, Co-Director of Spatial Justice

These experts bring a diverse range of experiences in research and advocacy and will contribute to the school’s teaching and creative practice by leveraging their experience in one or more of the following areas: 

• Race and decolonisation
• Climate crisis and sustainable architecture
• Community engagement and participatory design
• Restorative justice and spatial advocacy
• Cultural representation and diasporic identity

The cluster will work collaboratively to bring together skills and expertise from across our 24 programmes, and consolidate and catalyse the production of new knowledge. With upcoming curriculum changes from ARB and RIBA, the school is well-positioned to make racial, spatial and climate justice central to the education of future architects. The timing of these appointments also coincides with the launch of the new REF 2029 cycle, which places greater emphasis on Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) in UK research outputs.

Introducing the Just Environments Cluster

Thomas Aquilina, Co-Director of Spatial Justice

Thomas Aquilina is an architect and academic dedicated to building communities of radical imagination and collective practice. His work investigates the connections between Blackness, belonging and architecture’s imperial legacies, and spans different forms of practice including advocacy, design, film, pedagogy, policy, publishing and research. His current research draws on diasporic spatial experiences in both global and local contexts from downtown Kingston in Jamaica to North Kensington in London.

Thomas is a co-director of the New Architecture Writers programme, a co-founder of the publishing collective Afterparti and a senior associate at the architecture and urbanism practice, We Made That.

Before his role at The Bartlett, Thomas lectured at the Royal College of Art, London Metropolitan University and London School of Architecture, where he was the inaugural Stephen Lawrence Day Foundation Fellow. 

Janine Francois, Director of Climate Justice

Janine is a Black British Feminist scholar, whose research focuses on climate justice through the lens of feminist ethics of care, Black feminism and anti-colonial thought. 

As a cultural producer and curator Janine works across live performances and exhibitions. Janine has held curatorial residencies at LCC Studios, Guest Projects Africa and Hackney Museum. They have also curated programmes at 198 Contemporary Arts and Learning, Tate Britain, V&A, INiVA, Autograph, Lyric Hammersmith, Barbican, National Portrait Gallery, The Bussey Building and Rich Mix. Janine has written for The Independent, Architectural Review, VICE, Black Blossom Journal, Huffington Post and the Journal for Visual Culture, among others. 

Janine is currently working on their debut book that explores the Atlantic Ocean as an ontological site between the African continent and its diaspora via climate injustice.

Lidia Gasperoni, Co-Director of Design

Lidia is a philosopher and architectural theorist who specialises in the transformative function of architectural theory, practice and education and responds to contemporary challenges associated with designing just environments. 

She is the coordinator of the non-profit association Fieldstations, which promotes spatial research and knowledge in the Anthropocene. Within this framework, she launched and co-curates the educational platform ‘Anthropocene Pedagogies in Architecture’, which rethinks architectural education in the context of climate change.
     
Before her role at The Bartlett, Lidia was a postdoctoral researcher and lecturer in the Department of Architectural Theory at TU Berlin between 2018–2024. At TU Berlin, UdK Berlin and the University of Kassel, she taught in the fields of philosophy, architectural theory and design, with a focus on media theories, Anthropocene discourse and aesthetics.

Mohamad Hafeda, Co-Director of Ethics

Mohamad is an artist, author and academic specialising in spatial justice through participatory art and architecture. His research addresses borders, displacement, ethics and spatial rights. As a founding member of Febrik, a non-profit collaborative active in the Middle East and the UK, he advocates for underrepresented groups, focusing on their rights to urban space. 

Mohamad’s publications include Negotiating Conflict in Lebanon (2019), Creative Refuge (2014) and Action of Street / Action of Room: A Directory of Public Actions (2016). He is also the co-editor of Narrating Beirut from its Borderlines (2011) and Border Fictions (forthcoming). His films include The Time While Waiting (2022) and Sewing Borders (2017). Mohamad’s projects have been exhibited globally. In 2021, he was awarded the Philip Leverhulme Prize for his contributions to socially engaged art.

Mpho Matsipa, Co-Director of Spatial Justice

Mpho Matsipa is a South African-born design researcher, curator and urban theorist rooted in African design thinking across the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Ocean worlds. With over a decade of international research and teaching experience in sub-Saharan Africa, North America and Europe, her work explores southern urbanisms and the circulation of ideas, aesthetics, people and spatial practices.

A former Fulbright scholar, Mpho has held joint appointments as a research fellow at WiSER, a co-investigator on an Andrew Mellon grant on African futures, and a chancellor's fellow at the University of the Witwatersrand. Since concluding a Loeb Fellowship at Harvard, she has taught at Harvard, Columbia GSAPP and SCI-Arc. 

She is working on African Mobilities – A Library of Circulations in collaboration with Chimurenga, dividing her time between Johannesburg, London, Lagos, and New York. 

Next Steps: Just Environments Incubator

The arrival of these new colleagues coincides with the launch of the Values-in-Action Just Environments Incubator – dedicated seed funding for staff and/or student projects that prioritise racial, spatial or climate justice. 

The incubator will be facilitated by a group of shared governance colleagues who will make recommendations to the school director for project funding. This group includes Co-Directors of Research, Peg Rawes and Marjan Colletti; Director of Decolonising and Decarbonising, Neba Sere; and our five new colleagues. 

This initial round of seed funding will focus on high-impact projects, attracting philanthropic and industry partners to replenish the fund, thereby incubating new initiatives in subsequent years. 

Read more

• View Thomas Aquilina's profile
• View Janine Francois' profile
• View Lidia Gasperoni's profile
• View Mohamad Hafeda's profile
• View Mpho Matsipa's profile

Image: The Just Environments Cluster with Amy Kulper, clockwise from top left: Mohamad Hafeda, Mpho Matsipa, Thomas Aquilina, Janine Francois, Lidia Gasperoni and Amy Kulper.