People – Radical Urban Lab

Lab Members

Nerina Boursinou

I am an interdisciplinary migration researcher and a postdoctoral fellow in the School of Geography and Sustainable development at the University of St Andrews. I have a PhD from the School of Media, Communication and Sociology (University of Leicester) where I conducted research on (Forced) Migration and ICTs. My research interests include the study of the far-right, urban studies, ethics and participatory methodologies.

Josh Hazelbower

I am undertaking a PhD which considers how land ownership mediates both economic inequality and Indigenous-state relations, specifically within Coast Salish territories on Canada’s west coast. My academic background is in anthropology and political science, and I have worked in a number of roles in environmental assessment in Western Canada to consider impacts from development upon Aboriginal and Treaty rights of Indigenous peoples.

Ewan Jenkins

Presently I am a Research Fellow researching different stakeholder priorities when it comes to peatland restoration projects in the Outer Hebrides, in the context of community ownership, emerging carbon markets, rural development opportunities and the ‘neoliberalisation of nature’ versus more biocentric renderings.

Julia lurfova

I am a third year Undergraduate Sustainable Development and Geography student entering my final year in September 2022. I am interested in exploring how representations and discipline are enforced and (re)produced within urban landscapes, and, crucially, how they are resisted. Through inquiries into landscapes of memory and post-communist nostalgia, as well as various DIY urban resistance strategies and “right to the city” movements such as squatting or Food Not Bombs, I have explored these themes in the landscape closest to home – Prague.

Andreas Makris

My research interests lie in logistics’ criticality and pervasive power over our contemporary worlds and their multiple transitions. I am keen on exploring questions of infrastructure, media, power, and planetary dynamics through a logistical lens. I am currently studying some of these themes as part of his PhD research project, which focuses on a Mediterranean logistics hub port and seeks to examine its recent transformations and their social, political, and environmental implications across different scales. Prior to this, I studied transportation engineering, earned a master’s degree in logistics and supply chain management, and worked as a logistics officer in a 3PL company. The tasks of combining (old and new) materialisms and imagining futures beyond the bounds of our present-day overlapping crises excite me.

giorgos mattes

I am a Research Fellow at the University of St Andrews and a Science and Technology Studies scholar interested in critical urban policing studies and the history of state databases. My research interests are motivated by social inequalities and aim to offer critical explanations and methods of understanding contemporary problems.

Rowan Milligan

I am currently researching issues of gender and squatting in the context of resistance to the housing crisis. By centring the role of gender regarding inclusion in movements which aim to reclaim both public space and the private realm, I aim to highlight the ways in which women, migrants, and particularly migrant women, are predominantly affected by displacement processes, due to their greater reliance on low-income housing, benefits, and their precarious labour market prospects. This affects their ability to find housing alternatives after eviction, and their participation in anti-capitalist or overtly confrontational urban struggles.

benjamin ong

Ever in search of a sense of belonging, I currently identify as a reconciliation ecologist. My work largely revolves around drawing attention to the more-than-human in our immediate surroundings. I am currently working on a PhD that addresses nature connectedness and environmental education in the urban tropics. Combining art and science, and influenced by research-creation and action research among others, this body of work builds on a decade of work in education in botanic gardens; science communication and policy; international development cooperation; and art and public engagement.

Evie Papada

I am a human geographer with a keen interest in questions of social justice. Some of the themes I have explored in my work include the geopolitics of mobility and asylum, beuracratic violence, issues around informal settlements and the development/humanitarian industry and last, questions around the changing nature of borders. I am currently looking at the ways in which the digitilisation of policing impacts on the way we percieve and exeprience urban spaces.

Vanessa Schofield

Interested in riots and resistance / law and public order / events and evental theory / genealogy and archives.

Antonis Vradis

I am a geographer with an urban focus, a migration inclination and a political urge to make sense of our turbulent times. Over the past few years I have had the joy to work with a colleagues, friends and comrades in a number of projects including Transcapes, PURSI, Nutricities and the Welcoming City. What this diverse set of research endeavours holds in common is the drive to understand how cities and transient populations staying within, and traveling through them face up to the multiple crises of our times.

Nissa Finney

My work is concerned with residential experiences (where people live and where they move to/from), their drivers (individual migration decision making and structural constraints such as housing markets) and their consequences (for life chances and outcomes of individuals, for neighbourhood composition and cohesion, and for governance). Much of my work examines ethnicity in relation to these themes. My work is broadly, and theoretically, framed by my interest in inequalities and social justice.

Sharon Leahy

My research is concerned with the often hidden social geographies of difference and marginalisation, and the constitution of belonging. I seek to critically assess the discursive formation and consequent actualisation of difference politically and socially, and its impact on the most forgotten in society. I have acquired a specific interest in the ways in which elites produce and regulate knowledge in nuanced ways, allowing for the legitimisation of particular understandings and practices in relation to migrants and ethnic minority groups. I am researching the bordering practices being normalised through immigration legislation. I am currently interested in revealing the workings of the everywhere border in relation to the UK’s Immigration Acts (2014 & 2016).

Louise Reid

My main research interests surround the relationship between people and the environment, and the sustainability of this relationship. I am particularly interested in ‘environmentally sustainable practices’, and the processes through which these influence and are influenced by everyday household life. More recently, I have begun to explore the intersection of everyday household life, sustainability, and healthcare.

Michael Simpson

I study how infrastructures of fossil fuel circulation produce space and sustain racial colonial capitalist relations, and also how these infrastructures are disrupted and contested.