Mapping in research

The Lines of Flight research group will host a session with Doina Petrescu and Nishat Awan presenting the use of mapping in their work. How can maps and the activity of mapping be useful in research? What are the potentials and pitfalls? How do we use maps in our everyday life today? The talks will be followed by a discussion and an informal presentation round to which we invite participants to bring a map of their liking to be analysed collectively.

Date & time: May 24th 2017, 3-5pm
Location: Bartolome House (Law Building), Seminar Room EG 12

Everyone with an interest in mapping is welcome to this open event. We recommend signing up via Eventbrite here as space is limited. Looking forward to possibly seeing you there!

About our guest speakers:
Prof. Doina Petrescu is co-founder of the collective platform aaa (atelier d’architecture autogerée/ studio for self-managed architecture) and Professor of Architecture and Design Activism/ Head of Research at Sheffield University. She considers herself as a `nomadic subject´ in architecture operating between different fields of research and practice, places and cultures; a passionate educator, an academic aware of knowledge politics, an engaged practitioner and an active citizen who hopes that other ways of living and creating are possible.

Dr. Nishat Awan is an architect and lecturer at Sheffield University and is interested in the intersection of geo-politics and space and how this might be addressed in architectural theory and practice, including questions of post-coloniality, diasporas and border practices. Currently, she is working on two research projects: Topological Atlas: Mapping Borders as complex spaces of encounter and Edge of Europe: Migrant Narratives of Citizenship.

Storytelling Workshop (27.04.17)

The storytelling workshop that took place this week was a big success. While we didn’t generate a lot of people, those who came really took on the challenge and everyone noted that they came away with a lot of ideas and inspiration for their work going forward. It was the general consensus that we should schedule a another session, perhaps at the start of the new academic year. We will also likely set up an online discussion space for storyteller researchers to throw ideas around.

Please see attached the slide show from the afternoon. We are aiming to add to the video and referencing section as a lot of good material came out of the discussion. I will post an updated version once that has been completed. If anyone would like a pdf copy of the full slide show or if you would like a copy of the audio visual files that we recorded from the session, please do email me at cladd1@sheffield.ac.uk.

 

 

Story-telling Methodology

A new lines of flight session will be held on the 26th April 2017. It will take place in the Arts Tower, University of Sheffield from 2-4pm.

We will discuss story-telling methodology – in particular, the different ways narratives can be constructed as a framework for understanding subjects/objects and interview data within qualitative research.

 

Jenny Pickerill — LoF session on scholar activism

Next Wednesday, from 12 noon to 1pm we will host a session with Jenny Pickerill, in which we will collectively explore the possibilities of scholar-activism.

The session will be built up as follows: a brief history of why scholar-activism is necessary, important and some of its roots; then a discussion around a typology of different ways to be a scholar-activist. This includes shaping policy debates, long term community work, situated solidarities and direct action. Each will be discussed with examples, discussion of their impacts and reflections on some of their limitations.

6 May, 12.00 – 13.00
Sheffield School of Architecture
Arts Tower, floor 13
The seminar room next to the administrative office

Some reading:

The Autonomous Geographies Collective. (2010) Beyond Scholar activism: Making Strategic Interventions Inside and Outside the Neoliberal University. ACME, 9, 2, http://www.acme-journal.org/Volume9-2.htm

Derickson KD and Routledge P (2015) Resourcing Scholar-Activism: Collaboration, Transformation, and the Production of Knowledge, Professional Geographer, 67.

Scholar activism table

Lines of Flight in Hackeny Wick

Today, Lines of Flight will move to London, where, from 2pm onwards, we will discuss around mapping with Andreas Lang and Mara Ferreri. We will meet at public work’s studio in Hackney Wick at 2 and then walk over to the Wick Common Shop, a temporary space in residence until July in Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. As part of R-Urban Wick, it “hosts events, workshops and exhibitions around the idea of the ‘Common Object’, artefacts which are not conceived for individual gain but which express ideas of a common good while at the same time unearthing and revealing hidden relationships or narratives about the locality.”

Discussion over lunch with STEALTH.unlimited — practice-led PhD self-help

Ana Dzokic and Marc Neelen (STEALTH.unlimited) will be joining us next Wednesday, 18 March 2015 for an informal discussion over and after lunch.

Proposed points for the conversation, in which we’ll talk both of STEALTH’s and our own practices & research, could include:
– Coming from a practice background, how does one switch from ‘practice’ to ‘research mode’ as the PhD starts? What does ‘research’ imply in this context and for one’s practice?
– How to deal with issues of positionality and the multiple roles one needs to juggle being at the same time a practitioner, a researcher, a member of a community, …?
– What may happen after the PhD? How to accommodate a thorough, slow, reflexive kind of research-practice process into our messy busy everyday lives?

These are obviously non-exclusive and we’d be happy to add more points to the menu.

We’ll meet at 1pm in the communal space on the 9th floor of the Arts Tower and may move to a quieter space after lunch should the place be too busy.

Heidi Svenningsen Kajita – Fragile Possibilities in the Big Plans

Wednesday 28 June 2014 – 18h00 – room 16.03

Fragile Possibilities in the Big Plans

 

Balconies, extensive and robust asphalt surfaces,  ground floor flat windows and toilets,  sand,  back- and front gardens,  occupied basement air-raid shelters,  doors …

These are some of the material and spatial dimensions that residents’ appreciate and care for in three Scandinavian post-war modernist housing estates. 

Revolving around such details this lecture explores fragile architectural strategies and theories that may contribute to the redevelopment of the Big Plans by motivating engagement with place and change over time. 

 

Heidi Svenningsen Kajita is a Danish architect and currently PhD student at The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts.

She was a senior lecturer at University of East London 2003-10,  and has practiced in London with muf architecture/ art amongst others.