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The Bartlett Doctoral Informality Network (DIN) brings together people and ideas from across the Bartlett and the wider 香港六合彩中特网 community around the theme of informality.
The Network has been created to stimulate new ways of engaging with the contexts and processes associated with informality, the everyday struggles that are pursued and/or the structural conditions that are sometimes considered to lie at its core. While it is primarily a network of PhD students, we encourage participation from members of faculty and staff from across 香港六合彩中特网.听
It is evident that 鈥榠nformality鈥� relates to many issues and is important in different ways in different contexts. In developing countries, informality is a 鈥榳ay of life鈥� for the majority of the population defining their housing, livelihoods, movement, and governance.
In developed countries, informality takes different forms and sometimes emerges in similar ways to those of developing countries. Despite the centrality of 鈥榠nformality鈥� in everyday life, it is a contested concept and there is merit in sharing conceptualisations, methodologies and theoretical frameworks across different disciplines.
Aims
DIN provides spaces and opportunities to explore of concepts of informality, and its utility to activists and researchers involved in interrogating diverse themes, issues and geographies.
We are an inclusive, supportive and non-hierarchical network for the sharing of ideas on informality and encourage encounters that will lead to innovative collaborations across the Bartlett and 香港六合彩中特网.
Activities
The Informality Network is currently engaged in a Book Project, edited by and with contributions from PhDs involved in research that engages with various conceptions of Informality from across the Bartlett:听
- PhD seminars where students present on-going research and get feedback from a panel composed of faculty from across the Bartlett.
- Talks by academics and practitioners from within as well as beyond 香港六合彩中特网
- Reading groups
- Film and Documentary Screenings
- Informality Book Project
Published as part of 香港六合彩中特网's听Fringe Series, the book ''听demonstrates the value of greater and more diverse forms of engagement of built environment disciplines in what constitutes urban informality and its politics. It brings a multi-disciplinary approach to the study of informality and the built environment in diverse contexts, drawing on recent research by architects, planners, political scientists, geographers and urban theorists.
Prof. Christoph Lindner, Dean of The Bartlett,听香港六合彩中特网's听Faculty of the Built Environment听said:听鈥淲orking expertly across multiple disciplines and diverse geographies, this timely collection of essays shows why informality matters in our cities and how it shapes - and has the potential to reshape - everyday urban realities in profound ways."听
- People
The following people contribute to The Bartlett Doctoral Network Informality Network:
- Adriana Allen
- Alena Ledeneva
- Daniel Oviedo Hernandez
- Julio Davila
- Georgio Talocci
- Fulong Wu
- Michael Walls
- Kamna Patel
- Caren Levy
- Colin Marx
- Past events
Transforming Informality Symposium听27 - 28th October 2016
Urban informality continues to fascinate, confound and provoke theorists and practitioners across the Global North and South. The conceptualisation of the informal has morphed and shifted within different registers of meaning, offering distinctly powerful narratives yet falling for the most part within neat disciplinary boundaries.
The Bartlett Doctoral Informality Network invites you to join us in an exploration of eleven interrogations that seek to transform our understanding of informality and its interaction with the built environment. These interrogations draw upon diverse sites and literatures, yet coalesce to respond to notions of transformation, place-making, power relations, infrastructures and exchanges, embedded within the informal. This two-day symposium marks the penultimate stage in a book project, which draws together authors from across the Bartlett and international experts.
We have eleven contributions and two editors from the research student community. The book will have commentaries by globally renowned experts on the topic: Fran Tonkiss (LSE), Swati Chattopadhyay (UC Santa Barbara), Kim Dovey (U of Melbourne) and Catalina Ortiz (香港六合彩中特网).
The conference will take place on the 27th and 28th October at the 香港六合彩中特网. It be composed by the听book chapters鈥櫶齪resentations by their authors on Thursday afternoon and Friday morning (see schedule bellow) and a public lecture on Thursday evening by听Prof Kim Dovey (Melbourne) Prof Swati Chattopadhyay (UC Santa Barbara).
On the 27th
Time 听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听Room 听听听听听听Event
13.00-16.30听听听听听听听听101听听听听听听听听听Authors Presentations听(see schedule below)
16.30-17.30听听听听听听听听听听- 听听听听听听听听听听Tea/coffee Break
17.30-19.30听听听听听听听听101 听听听听听听听听Public Lecture听(details below)
On the 28th
Time 听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听Room 听听听听听听Event
9.30-13.00听听听听听听听听101听听听听听听听听听Authors Presentations (see schedule below)
Authors鈥� presentations
Venue: Room 101,听
Development Planning Unit
34 Tavistock square,听WC1H 9EZ, London.This conference brings a multi-disciplinary approach to the study of informality and the built environment in diverse contexts, drawing on on-going research by architects, planners, political scientists, geographers and urban theorists. The cases studied promote a cross fertilization between disciplines, lenses, geographies and methodologies. They range from the creative place-making of street artists in Accra and the informal architectures of Somali Markets in Cape Town, to the morphological evolution of built form in Tirana, urban agriculture in la Habana and social reproduction in Greece. The volume represents a rich tapestry of intersecting themes, the overarching one being the idea of redefining informality as an ever-changing concept. Informality in the built environment is presented as transformative and interwoven with notions of place-making, power relations, infrastructure and exchange.
Thursday 27th听afternoon :
13.00-13.30:听Fani Kostourou and Paul Goodship.听Bartlett Architecture听// Informality Through The Lens Of The Architect. An Overview Of Informality From The Perspective Of The Mainstream Architectural Press.
13.30-14.00:听Juan Pablo Astorga.听Bartlett Planning听// Urban transformations: towards ordinary cities?听
14.00-14.30:听Deena Khalil.听Bartlett DPU听// Accommodating Informality: Capitalist Accumulation through Water and Electricity in Cairo鈥檚 Ashwa鈥檈yat.
14.30-15.00:听Huda Tayob.听School of Architecture听// Opaque Infrastructures: Pan- African markets in Cape Town (1990 鈥� present).
15.00-15.30:听General Discussion
Friday 28th听morning:
9.30-10.00:听Isabel Gutierrez.听School of Architecture听// Grassroots politics and spatiality of social reproduction in crisis-ridden Athens.听
10.00-10.30:听Shabrina Zahratu & Yongping Zhang.听Bartlett CASA听// Regulating the unregulated: Exploring the Airbnb dynamic using space-time analytic methods.
10.30-11.00:听Chin-Wei Chang.听Bartlett Architecture听// The Death and Life of Jian-Cheng Circle: A negative Lesson to the Built Informality of Urban Places.
11.00-11.30:听Claire Tunnacliffe.听Bartlett Architecture听// Place Making in the informal: Change Maker Painters in Accra, Ghana.
11.30-12.00:听Lucia Cerrada Morato.听Bartlett Planning听// Everyday infrastructures and the sprawled territories. The potential of decentralized infrastructures in the Atlantic Axis Region.
12.00-12.30:听General Discussion
Urban informality - public lecture
Date: Thursday 27th October 2016
Time: 17.30-19.00
Venue: Room 822,听
20 Bedford way
London WC1HPresenters: Prof Kim Dovey (Melbourne) Prof Swati Chattopadhyay (UC Santa Barbara)
Kim Dovey will present how most new urbanization over the past 50 years has emerged outside state听control within cities of the global south through informal processes.听This presentation explores an assemblage approach to the mapping of cities听that are becoming both formalized and informalized. How and where do such听settlements emerge and with what morphological patterns and urban codes?听What is the relation of such processes and forms to theories and practices听of power?
Swati Chattopadhyay will talk to the theme of how the听discourse on informality is seemingly caught between the dual problems of hypervisibility and illegibility, of endurance and impermanence.听听If modern states can only apprehend the informal within its own logic, how do we, as researchers, apprehend the informal as an object of discourse? How do we locate and represent the time and space of the informal? Focusing on the representation of the Santal Rebellion in mid-nineteenth century India as an historical event, this talk addresses the problem of legibility at the interface between the state and the ungoverned symptoms of the informal.
Kim Dovey is Professor of Architecture and Urban Design in the faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning, University of Melbourne.
Professor Swati Chattopadhyay is an architect and architectural historian specializing in modern architecture and urbanism, and the cultural landscape of British colonialism in the History of Art and Architecture Department, University of California Santa Barbara.
DIN PhD Seminar on Informality and Methods - Deadline 22nd May 2015听
We invite MPhil/PhDs from any department who would like to present, to send us a 300 word brief on their research by the 22nd of May. Entries are encouraged from students at any stage of the PhD as long as their research looks at or encounters the concept of informality. We are particularly interested in innovative methods of researching the informal. 听
Authors of selected entries will be given 15 minutes to present to an audience of PhDs and staff from across the Bartlett and the wider 香港六合彩中特网 community on the 24th of June 2015. Kindly send your entries to听Nikhilesh Sinha.
We will inform all those who send in entries of our decision by the 1st of June. Please do come even if your entry is not selected for presentation, we鈥檙e planning more events in future!听
Note: You do not need to be part of the Informality Network to participate, and there will be sign up sheets at the event.
Inaugural PhD Seminar and Networking Event 鈥� 3rd December 2014
The inaugural event of the Bartlett Doctoral Informality Network was held on the 3rd of December. It was attended by staff and PhD students from several Departments across the Bartlett and 香港六合彩中特网 including the School of Planning (BSP), the Development Planning Unit (DPU), the Institute for Sustainable Resources (ISR), Civil, Environmental and Geomatic Engineering, the School of Slavonic and Eastern European Studies and the Department of Geography.
We had brief presentations by three Phd Students: Ben Flower from Geography, Louise Guibrunet from the ISR and Kisnaphol Wattanawanyoo (Keng) from the DPU. Ben's presentation focused informality and land tenure in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Louise talked about the informal economy in Tepito, Mexico City and the concept of urban metabolism, while Keng shared some fascinating insights gained from observing the mobile food markets in Bangkok. 听听
Prof Adriana Allen of the DPU and Prof Fulong Wu from the BSP then responded with excellent comments, interrogating the ways in which the concept of informality was engaged with in each case, but also reflecting on what it means to research the informal. This then opened into a rich debate with valuable contributions from all present, with the discussion carrying on for a couple of hours over drinks and snacks.
It was an exhilarating launch and this augers well for future events.
- Contact
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