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Research Title
Everyday Infrastructures of Welcome: Shifting Landscape of Asylum and Integration Politics in Berlin
- More about Julia
Education
- 2019 onwards: MPhil/PhD Candidate, Human Geography, University College London
- 2013-2015: MA Theories of Urban Practice, Parsons, The New School for Design
- 2009-2013: BA (Hons) Urban Studies, Human Geography & Political Science, University of Toronto
- Teaching
I have been involved in the following teaching:
Lecturer, Parsons, The New School for Design, 2015-2017
- PLDS 3502 Global Issues in Design and Visuality of the 21st Century
- PSDS 2100 Design Research and Development Methods
Teaching Assistant, Parsons, The New School for Design, 2015
- PSDS 5508 Urban Theory Lab, led by Miodrag Mitrasinovic and Miguel Robles-Durán
- Publications
Publications
- Borowicz, Julia, “The Draw of Difference” in Global Urbanist, 21 August, 2016.
- Borowicz, Julia, “What Makes a Space Public?” in New Cities Foundation, 21 December, 2015.
- Borowicz, Julia and Larissa Begault, “Methodologies for Reconstructing New Landscapes of Consumption and Production” in Urban Creativity Scientific Journal, Issue #1, 2015.
- “Designing for an Equitable New York”: A Policy Recommendations Book, Developed by the graduate students in Theories of Urban Practice, Design & Urban Ecologies, and Design Studies Programs at Parsons, School of Design, 2013.
- Borowicz, Julia, “Archival Responses: Urban Feminist, Queer and Indigenous Solidarity Practices.” FUSE Magazine, 2012 Blog Series on FUSE’s feminist legacy explored through an urban lens.
Press
- Serena Dai, “Williamsburg Walking Tour Examines How to Increase Public Space” DNAinfo NY, April 2015
- Tanay Warerkar, “Reclaiming Williamsburg Through Walking Workshops” Greenpoint Gazette, April 2015
Exhibitions and Conferences
- Philadelphia Assembled, in•sitecollaborative: Mural concept design, research, & mapping, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia 2017
- In between the Lines, Van Alen Institute: Open Poll: Flash Competition Finalist [Redesigning voting], New York, 2016
- The Irresistible Resistance: Earth Week 2016, in.site collaborative + Tishman Environment and Design Center, Presentation and Conference, The New School, April 2016.
- Actionable Theory, Parsons Festival + Industry City, New York, May 2015
- Perpetual Renewal: Investigating Urban Renewal In The Lower East Side, Parsons School of Design + 596 Acres, Governor’s Island, New York, August 2014
- Research Interests
My PhD work focuses on how “welcome” is lived in Berlin in the wake of the so-called “refugee crisis” of 2015-2016. My research reveals that spaces and practices of welcome are always conditional and shifting structurally, discursively and affectively in ways that warrant attention. I argue that the discourse and policy of welcome is lived through a series of ongoing contested relationships in which people – whether state representatives, social workers, activists, immigrants, refugees, or others – negotiate their role within the provision of care alongside notions of responsibility, community, and placemaking practices.
It is an ethnographic study of the ephemeral and enduring solidarities, street-level agencies, and affective encounters that have emerged in everyday politics over space in Neukölln today, an important place of arrival for newcomers and a neighborhood with a longer fraught history of and relationship to migration and multiculturalism. This research situates itself within wider debates around the dynamics that have emerged in the shifting landscape of integration and asylum politics in Germany and beyond. It aims to offer greater understanding on how these dynamics intersect with lived experiences and stark contiguities of being in, and inhabiting, the city in ways that remain unsettled.