The newly-built Toronto Star building ca. 1974, with the under-construction CN Tower top left, and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s Toronto-Dominion Centre top right.

Baumeister interview on ‘media houses’

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

Urban Media Now (event at Birkbeck, 31 March 2020)

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

City Maps: Shannon Mattern and Rebecca Ross on ‘Mapping urban media infrastructures’

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

Now in print: ‘Roots and fields: excursions through place, space, and local in hyperlocal media’

My article ‘Roots and fields: excursions through place, space, and local in hyperlocal media‘ is now available in print Volume 40, Issue 6, pp. 856 – 874 of Media, Culture & Society (subscription required – green open access is available on BIROn). I include the article abstract below. Roots and fields: excursions through place, space, … Continue Reading

Thinking media through the city (Birkbeck Excellence in Teaching Award talk)

Slightly last minute here, but if anyone is interested in hearing about an alternative assessment technique in media/urban studies, I have just the thing for you. Tomorrow (1 March 2017) I will be giving a 4pm talk at Birkbeck’s Centre for Transformative Practice in Learning and Teaching, around the ‘urban media inventory’ assessment that I … Continue Reading