Critical Urban Heritage
Engaging with heritage as a key shaper of urban experience and identities, the urban environment, and urban futures.
Heritage is often seen as the preserve of conservationists and historians, but for urbanists the ways in which architectural, cultural and social heritage narratives frame urban experience and identity, and shape the urban environment, are critical to understanding urban futures.
This theme links to the work of the Curating the City research cluster led by Urban Lab and the Institute of Archaeology in the Centre for Critical Heritage Studies at UCL. It promotes critical, transdisciplinary, and participatory approaches to the definition and evaluation of urban heritage, and engages particularly with heritage research in complex, cosmopolitan and postcolonial cities.
Professorial Research Fellow in Anthropology of Built Environments
UCL Urban Laboratory
Alongside Clare's research on universities as actors in urban regeneration, she has led on a number of cross-disciplinary urban heritage research programmes and activities within Urban Lab, focusing on postcolonial and decolonial urban contexts. Contact clare.melhuish@ucl.ac.uk to propose activities or connect with our work under this Priority Area.
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Report published on LGBTQ+ spaces in Camden, 1986-present
Commissioned by Camden and UCL Public Policy this report highlights the borough's LGBTQ+ day and night-time spaces. It documents a roundtable that brought the council, community organisations and businesses together to discuss ways to support these spaces into the future.
30 Apr 2020
Evaluating the impact of university development on urban areas and heritage
Research scoping workshop hosted by Dr Clare Melhuish as a follow-up to an initial collaborative workshop at Roma Tre University in Rome in May 2019, funded by the UCL Cities partnerships Programme.
13 Dec 2019
Caribbean School of Architecture urban study visit to London
Urban Lab was delighted to help host the Caribbean School of Architecture’s MArch, Year 1, Urban Study visit to London at the end of November, led by Head of School Jacquiann Lawton.
03 Dec 2019