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.

 

Lines of Flight: Finding your voice in activist & performative research

 Please find attached the poster for the next Lines of Flight session on Thursday 21st November, 11am-4pm Room 16.03

This session will explore how researchers across a number of disciplines write about and position their work on cities, space and landscapes. The morning talks will be followed by an afternoon exploring writing in research. 

 

Lucy Livingstone is a visual artist working across video, photography and performance, currently undertaking a practice-led PhD in Visual Art at Northumbria University.  Through immersive walks through sites she seeks out the narratives that shape space, using performance, video and photographic strategies to create a unique response to each site and looking for the tension when histories clash and collide.  Each work aims to illuminate and question the narratives that exist within the space. Her research has taken place in various places including Teeside, the East End of Glasgow and in the American Desert on a derelict WW2 airbase.

Dr Sophie Handler‘s research explores the spatial dimensions of ageing through practice-based works in the public realm. She has written The Fluid Pavement a semi-fictional story about older people’s particular experience of public space and is now working on the real-time implementation of one the fantasies contained within it. Trained in architectural theory, Sophie has taught and applied theory and research through work with muf architecture/art and AAA (Paris).

Dr David Forrest is lecturer in Film Studies in the School of English at the University of Sheffield. His research focuses on issues of place and identity in British realist cinema and television drama, and his latest book is entitled Social Realism: Art, Nationhood and Politics. David also co-leads the Storying Sheffield project with Professor Brendan Stone.

To get an idea of numbers please RSVP to Julia Udall or Carl Fraser if you wish to attend.

Talk: Images as Solidarity

A talk and discussion with Yutaka Sho, 14th March 2012, 6pm

The Well, Floor 16, The Arts Tower

Yutaka is the founder of General Architecture Collaborative, a US-based design and advocacy firm that works with non-profit, municipal and academic partners. In Rwanda GAC is building a village and an accompanying community center for an association of widows of the 1994 genocide. She has researched and practiced in Lebanon, Bangladesh, Turkey, Uganda and Japan. Currently Yutaka is an assistant professor of architecture at Syracuse University. She received master’s degree in architecture from Graduate School of Design at Harvard upon completing her thesis to design a network of public spaces for women in an informal settlement in Izmir, Turkey.

Seminar 20: Activating and Storytelling

An open seminar with STEALTH.unlimited and Meike Schalk.

10:30 – 12:00 Arts Tower Room 18.07

http://www.stealth.ultd.net/stealth/

http://www.fatale.nu/