my work
As a cultural urban sociologist my research is interdisciplinary. The key areas of research I cover are urban life and culture with a emphasis on the relationship between spatial politics and experiential urbanism.
My academic work analyses urban environments with regards to how public spaces are being designed, planned, used and experienced. My aim is to establish what role public spaces play in the city for different communities, from a high-street to a square. And, what public spaces mean to different people whether long term or new residents, to someone working there or a tourist. I am interested in understanding how urban change such as regeneration projects affect our senses of place and our interactions with others. In particular, how urban life and politics are underpinned by sensory, temporal and emotional dimensions that shape power relations in urban culture, planning and governance.
More recently, I have developed a passion for examining how digital technologies are transforming and affecting the design and experience of cities. From Instagram to phone apps or Computer Generated Images, digital visualisations are reconfiguring our urban experiences in powerful and differentiated ways, deeply transforming our engagements with urban spaces.
what does this mean?
Let’s look at the example of a bench in a square. A bench transforms a physical space and creates a new relationship to the space: it can be somewhere to sit on; or a skateboarding ramp; become a memorial space or a space to sleep. It can also promote social interactions as it might invite strangers to chat or create friction as someone might leave as soon as another person sits down.
When we approach a bench we check it out: is it new, old? Comfortable – made of wood or metal? Is it clean? Is it in the sun or in a cold corner? Do I feel exposed or protected? Who is sitting on it already? Hence, we judge and assess the bench through our sensory experiences which are not just biological perceptions but informed by social, cultural value judgements. To put it simply, there are a whole range of social power dynamics at work. My research tries to not just describe these power relations are but further advise how we can create inclusive public spaces.
I offer suggestions to urban professionals on the feelings, experiences and uses that a place evokes and which can inform their placemaking practices. Digital technologies have further added layers to the uses and perceptions of public space and life as they increasingly mediate through social media for example, how we engage and experience these spaces.
Sentido de lugar e inclusión socioespacial en barrios vulnerables: Barcelona, Bilbao, Lleida y Bogota (2022-2025, funded by Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation)
I am an advisor on Prof Quim Bonastra (University of Lleida) international project analysing the sense of place and atmospheres of vulnerable neighbourhoods through a range of co-produced creative methodologies
Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation award
PID2021-123255OB-I00
Examining Practices of Planning and Experiential Placemaking (2021 – ongoing, funded by Brunel University Impact Fund)
Since 2021 I have been working with a range of urban professionals from architects, urban designers and planners on a range of regeneration projects in London. With Dr Louise Rondel and Dr Tom Butler we have developed a range of community consultation projects focused on researching the sense of place, experiential engagements and uses of places. We have developed reports for councils used for masterplans and local plans, are writing a range of academic papers analysing different aspects of planning practices and have developed a booklet for the general public on how to get involved in local planning.
Visit booklet here: “Shaping where we live” (link to report Here)
Creative Connections: researching the scope of the Creative Industries in West London (2022, funded by HEIF)
The Creative and Cultural Industries are some of the UK’s fastest growing sectors, growing at four times the rate of the UK economy. The Creative and Cultural Industries shape West London’s social and cultural life and economy in important and meaningful ways. Dr Isobel Ward and myself conducted research to better understand the needs of the CCIs in West London and how Brunel University can engage with and support them, read our report.
Sensory explorations of West Smithfield (2017 – ongoing with the Museum of London)
I have developed ongoing research around the changing sense of place of the Smithfield Market area as it becomes transformed through the City of London’s latest regeneration projects the ‘Culture Mile’ and the New Museum of London. Beginning in 2017, funded by Brunel Research Development and in collaboration with The Museum of London, I produced a report which informed the new museum’s design and curatorial content. The study analysed the changing identity of the Smithfield area, drawing on new digital and experiential methodologies quantified for the museum in a series of evocative digital maps, see: sensorysmithfield.com.
Continuing this collaboration, in 2020 along with the Museum of London I was awarded an AHRC Collaborative Techne doctoral studentship “Changing Places: Evaluating the socio-cultural impact and experiential change of the new Museum of London in Smithfield” which is pursued by Tom Butler.
Timescapes of Urban Change (2016-2017 British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship)
In 2016 I was awarded a British Academy Mid-Career Fellow examining “Timescapes of Urban Change” (BA grant number MD140041). I examined how different perceptions of time converge or conflict in urban regeneration processes across the structural and experiential level to produce a particular sense of place. Drawing on long term fieldwork of an urban regeneration process in el Raval, Barcelona, this research explored temporal features as a crucial dimension in shaping power relations in regeneration processes.
Sensory Cities International Network (2015-2017, funded by AHRC)
Between 2015-2017 I ran (PI) an international AHRC network:
“Sensory Cities: researching, representing and curating sensory-emotional landscapes of urban environments”
which brought together city museum curators, urban branding experts, activists and urban planners to develop new methodologies to capture the sense of place of cities and the ways in which urban environments are stratified by power relations.
AHRC award: AH/M006379/1
Architectural atmospheres, branding and the social (2011-13, funded by ESRC)
The project Architectural atmospheres, branding and the social which I began in 2011 (with Prof G. Rose and Dr Clare Melhuish), was a two-year ethnographic study of architectural studios exploring how digital visualization processes and technologies operate within the architecture and urban design profession, shape new kinds of architectural work practices and envision particular forms of future social life in the city of Doha, Qatar. As part of the project we curated a two week exhibition in August 2013 at the Building Centre, London as well as an international workshop: Visualising Atmospheres.
ESRC award: RES-062-23-3305
Urban Aesthetics: a comparison of experiences in Milton Keynes and Bedford town centres (2007-2009, funded by ESRC)
The project Urban Aesthetics that I developed with Prof Gillian Rose explored new methods to research how people experience two very different town centres (Milton Keynes and Bedford), highlighting the role of memory in urban experiences.
ESRC grant RES-062-23-0223
Sensing Cities: Regenerating public life in Barcelona and Manchester (1997-2001, funded by ESRC)
My PhD project was my first large piece of research. Over 5 years I investigated for the first time and from a comparative perspective the regeneration of two neighbourhoods in Barcelona and Manchester through the prism of the senses focusing on how this changed their public space and life. I argued that as cities globally re-design their urban landscapes, they produce a different urban aesthetic and create new experiential milieus. Urban regeneration processes generate radical physical, social and cultural changes in neighbourhoods that demand new conceptual frameworks to address their impact upon daily urban life.
My research explored how the increased stylization of cityscapes requires an understanding of public life as a spatial-sensuous encounter and examined how power relations in public spaces are embedded in, exercised and resisted through the sensuous geography of place. This sensory paradigm is then applied to compare two emblematic regeneration projects, namely el Raval in Barcelona and Castlefield in Manchester. By combining detailed ethnographic analysis and interviews with those involved in planning regeneration processes and those experiencing them, the book argues that a changing sensuous landscape is crucial in redefining people’s social practices, attachments and experiences in places Ultimately, Sensing Cities examined how urban regeneration is made effective through the organisation of sensory experience.
ESRC award: R00429734434