Over at Mediapolis Journal, I have published a new essay on what I think might some emergent interdependences between platforms (specifically social media) and local care during the COVID-19 pandemic. One possible reaction to this news might be, “Not another take on Covid!” As the below passage I’ve excepted from the essay indicates, I’m well … Continue Reading
On 14 July 2020, 5pm, I will be chairing a webinar on Digital Extremism and the City with Bharath Ganesh and Robert Topinka, who will discuss the digitalised tropes, affects and infrastructures of the far right in, through and in relation to the city. This is part of a new ‘Urban Intersections’ series that I am organising with Mara … Continue Reading
A couple of weeks ago I was included in a short series of ‘culture diaries’ during this year’s Birkbeck Arts Weeks – plural because for the first time it was more than a single week, in fact five, transpiring entirely online. I’d really enjoyed reading the contributions that preceded my own from Joanne Leal, Marina … Continue Reading
Just before the UK went into it lockdown in late March 2020, I did an interview with Alexander Gutzmer on ‘media houses’ for the German architecture magazine Baumeister. We discussed what is at stake in studies of media companies’ headquarters, offices and facilities, with reference to my research into the Toronto Star‘s various facilities around … Continue Reading
I’m happy to announce that on 31 March 2020, I will be hosting a public discussion with Charlotte Brundson (Warwick), Zlatan Krajina (Zagreb), David Rowe (Western Sydney) and Deborah Stevenson (Western Sydney) on the notion that media studies might be experiencing an ‘urban’ moment. The discussion is inspired by the release of the Routledge Companion to … Continue Reading
Workshop 5 was the concluding workshop of the CHASE City Maps series, and was led by Ben Fraser (University of Arizona). It had two aims. On the one hand, it offered reflections on the emerging field of Urban Cultural Studies and its interdisciplinary approach, bridging the Arts and Humanities and the Social Sciences. On the … Continue Reading
In Workshop 4 of the CHASE City Maps series, Shannon Mattern (The New School) and Rebecca Ross (Central Saint Martins) examined methods for exploring, excavating, observing, testing, and notating urban media infrastructures, broadly defined. Participants developed a shared infrastructural question and cartographic strategy, before heading out to Bloomsbury’s Russell Square and environs to make observations. … Continue Reading
In Workshop 3 of the CHASE City Maps series, Clancy Wilmott from the University of Manchester (now at University of California Berkeley) began with an outline of her own work on mobile mapping, and the emerging relationships between space, cartography and digital technologies. These themes were connected with the research projects of workshop participants, who … Continue Reading
In Workshop 1 of the CHASE City Maps series, Iain Borden from University College London focused on ‘experience’ as a transdisciplinary urban concept. As depicted in the film from the workshop, his introduction to the concept of experience was both via his own work – on topics ranging from skateboarding to automobile driving – as … Continue Reading
The website for last year’s ‘City Maps’ workshop – which I co-convened with Mari Paz Balibrea and Lawrence Webb – is now live. This series was funded by the CHASE Doctoral Training Partnership, and included workshops led by Johan Andersson, Iain Borden, Ben Fraser, Shannon Mattern, Rebecca Ross and Clancy Wilmott. I’d be remiss to … Continue Reading