Night Scenes roundtables - virtual events

Night Scenes is a series of events examining how night spaces have been imagined, produced, experienced and narrated in European cities by communities who have mobilised around particular migrant identities or histories. These events are linked to a three-year transdisciplinary European research project - NITE - exploring nocturnal public spaces in eight European cities (Aarhus, Amsterdam, Berlin, Cork, Galway, Lisbon, London, Rotterdam). The project, and events, set out to explore night-time urban settings in their complexity as sites of crisis and regeneration, memory and heritage, visibility and invisibility, community solidarity and growth, and to contribute evidence from the arts and humanities to policy and wider debates on cities at night.

Join us on consecutive days for roundtables of recent masters graduates and current doctoral researchers bring together an array of perspectives on the urban night, migration, integration and culture. These draw from a broad range of disciplinary backgrounds, theoretical frameworks and empirical investigations.

Wednesday 6 May, 14.00 - 16.00 BST

• Amalia Calderón (University of Amsterdam) - Nighttime Pleasures for Outsiders
• Alexander Salem (King’s College London) - LGBTQ+ Nightlife Venues in London: An Investigation into the Socio-economic, Technological, and Cultural Drivers of Nightlife Decline
• Pol Esteve Castello (Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL) - Discotheques in Platja d’Aro: the Emergence of a Neo-colonialist Pleasure Economy
• Seger Kersbergen (NITE and Leiden University) - Music Practices at Night: Belonging and Cultural Consciousness in the Cape Verdean Diaspora

Thursday 7 May, 14.00 - 16.00 BST

• Jordan Rowe and Mia Rafalowicz-Campbell (UCL Urban Lab and Campbell Tickell) - Night Views: Expanding the Field of Urban Night Studies Through Student-led Policy Engagement
• Adam Walls (Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL) - Light, Darkness and Race in Late-Victorian London
• Arba Bekteshi (Cultural and urban anthropologist) - Eerie Movements in A Deserted City: Nightly Autoethnography in Tirana
• Jiawei Zhao (King’s College London) - Night Markets in London and Shanghai: Urban Nightlife in Underused Land
• Laura-Solmaz Litschel (NITE and University of Leuphana) - Transformers of the Urban Night - Platform Labour, Migration and Smart City

Part of the Night Scenes virtual event series, 30 April - 15 May 2020. All events are free but require registration. Links to access events will be emailed to registered attendees the day before each event. Please contact urbanlaboratory@ucl.ac.uk if you require assistance.