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Originally set up in 2005, this timeline provides a brief institutional history of the Urban Laboratory
2005
UCL Urban Laboratory established by geographer Matthew Gandy, inspired by discussions with colleagues in architecture. It quickly extended across other fields including anthropology, engineering, film studies and urban sociology.
2005—08
The Urban Laboratory continues to grow, launching a dedicated website and creating the Urban Salon seminar series in partnership with several London universities.
2008—09
Interdisciplinary Urban Studies MSc founded and run by the UCL Urban Laboratory, recruiting 20-25 students each year since.
2008—11
The Urban Laboratory is awarded £250,000 by the Provost’s Strategic Development Fund.
2009
Inaugural Cities Methodologies exhibition—‘a marketplace of urbanism’—initiated with the Slade School of Fine Art. Subsequent editions visit Budapest and are documented in a 2016 edited anthology, Engaged Urbanism.
2011
Urbanist and architectural historian Ben Campkin becomes director.
2013
Launch of the first Urban Pamphleteer, containing a range of articles on Future & Smart Cities. The seventh issue was published in summer 2018.
Clare Melhuish appointed as Research Associate, funded by UCL Estates to work on a research project on university-led urban regeneration, published in 2015.
2013—16
UCL Urban Laboratory is a partner in the URBAN LAB+ international network of urban laboratories, funded by the European Union’s Erasmus Mundus programme.
2015
The City Centre in UCL’s Department of English merges with the Urban Lab to form Cities Imaginaries, a new strand of work on the cultural representation of cities, led by Matthew Beaumont.
2016
LGBTQ+ nightlife spaces research initiated by Ben Campkin and Lo Marshall, in collaboration with community groups Raze Collective and the Queer Spaces Network. A comprehensive report commissioned by the Greater London Authority is published in July 2017.
2017
Urban Lab Exchange launches to deliver professional short courses.
2018
Anthropologist Clare Melhuish becomes director.
2021
UCL East opens at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, featuring a new Urban Room, London Memory Archive and masters and doctoral programmes on global, future cities.