Projects – Radical Urban Lab

The Forced Space: an architectural and human narrative during the war in Gaza (Hussein Naim, RUL-Gaza Fellow)

RUL is immensely proud to virtually host Hussein Naim, a Gaza-based Palestinian architect and multidisciplinary artist, as its inaugural RUL-Gaza Fellow for 2025-26. Hussein’s research explores themes of forced displacement, crisis urbanism, and the spatial consequences of war. He has led several community-based artistic initiatives, including “Reviving Memory”, a visual arts project modelling Palestinian cities under occupation, and “The Coloured History of Palestine”, a mosaic-based initiative that reconstructs collective memory in destroyed neighbourhoods. As part of his Fellowship, Hussein will be working on the Forced Space project below, partaking in all RUL activities as well as joining, and presenting at

The Sounds of Resistance

Welcome to The Sounds of Resistance! This is a student-led research project exploring how music has shaped, supported, and sustained protest and resistance movements around the world. Through case studies ranging from Armenian composer Komitas to queer disco icon Sylvester, we examine how music functions not only as a cultural artefact but also as a powerful tool for defiance, healing, and identity formation. Music and liberation struggles have always gone hand in hand, whether as a means to preserve the culture of the oppressed, find strength and comfort, or actively oppose oppressors. Our central theme is joy as resistance. At

Art, politics and dissent in Plateia Protomagias: a documentary by the DtC collective (Sofia Makavou, Anna Papoutsi, Antonis Vradis)

https://vimeo.com/manage/videos/1069517782 Public space in Athens today is under attack: whether by way of rampant commercialisation, privatisation, policing or surveillance, the character of public space is undergoing a rapid, violent and unprecedented transformation. In the years since the pandemic, the city’s public spaces (parks, hills or squares) have been targeted by the authorities as targets to be pacified, and by developers as an area of potential profit. In addition, the city’s metro expansion (line 4) has commenced, meaning the long-term fencing off of some of the capital’s most emblematic and central squares (Exarcheia, Protomagias, Kolonaki, among others). Against this backdrop, authorities

Where Earth Ends: Rediscovering and reimagining Scotland’s urban green spaces (Benjamin Ong)

While various sustainable landscape approaches are in motion — from edible gardens to wildflower meadows — biodiversity conflict (e.g., different expectations of landscape) remains a key obstacle to imagining and realising these alternatives. This conflict is evident around us, from so-called pigeon spikes to the debate around manicured vs. messy gardens. There is a fundamental need for reconciliation and a transformation of the human-nature relationship. The University recently awarded School of Geography and Sustainable Development PhD student and RUL member Benjamin Ong a Scotland’s Future Series grant for a project titled ‘Where Earth Ends: Rediscovering and reimagining Scotland’s urban green

Behind barricaded doors: gender, class, and power in the London squatting movement (Rowan Milligan)

I am exploring how gender and class condition power and hierarchy within the London squatting movement. Squats are a significant intervention in drawing the housing crisis out of an individualised, private sphere, and recasting it as a collective struggle. Many squats function both as a material solution to the housing problem through providing shelter and support whilst also functioning as social spaces, with cafes, bars, and other communal activities. As these are forms of resistance that are situated inside the home, I am examining whether these purportedly feminist and autonomous spaces subvert or replicate gendered/sexist divisions of labour and interpersonal

Building sustainable, inclusive and just cities (Antonis Vradis and Hons colleagues)

Antonis teaches a popular Honours module at St Andrews, Building Sustainable, Inclusive and Just Cities. In the module’s inaugural year (2020-21), Hons colleagues were asked to present a major urban challenge in a city that they were familiar with, and to explain how local communities could go about challenging this, without corporate or state intervention. The result was Community Power, a virtual special issue edited by Moriah Hull, Linda Eckefeldt, Mathilde Roze and Antonis Vradis. In 2022-23, the edited collection turned into the first book published by the Radical Urban Lab: “Sustainable, Inclusive and Just Cities” numbered 369 pages featuring

Is Gentrification the new Colonialism? Perspectives from Political Geography (Josh Hazelbower)

This research examines how enduring colonial attitudes and practices treat land in Canada as a financial instrument, at the expense of its economic functions, including the provision of affordable housing. This research further considers how such practices cause land use inefficien-cies, pushing development to sprawl outward into Indigenous land not yet under colonisation. Aspects of these problems were identified long ago, in the era of Canada’s confederation (1867-1871), and were even then widely criticized for creating socio-economic inequality (George 1884). This earlier reckoning became known as the “land crisis” (Lough 2012). My re-search builds on a growing body of work

Roaming the city of illusions: understanding migrant trajectories through their use of Information and Communication Technologies (Nerina Boursinou)

In 2014/2015, the EU faced one of the most severe border crises in its contemporary history, profoundly reshaping its governance structures and democratic values. Migrants crossing its land and maritime frontiers provoked a number of reactions from its institutions, politicians and citizens. Over the course of the following six years, the EU territory was re/formed through spatial contestations, severe border violence and xenophobic discourses. At the same time, the continent has witnessed unprecedented and decentralised solidarity actions toward these newcomers. In these ways, the continent’s ‘refugee crisis’ involved multiple dynamics between a range of actors and stakeholders, which were not

Critical Understandings of Predictive Policing (Evie Papada, Giorgos Mattes and Antonis Vradis)

Evie Papada, Giorgos Mattes and Antonis Vradis are part of an international team of researchers looking at the impact of predictive policing. Critical Understanding of Predictive Policing (CUPP), is an international project running from 1 February 2021 until 31 January 2023 funded under the NordForsk Research and Innovation Programme on Digitalisation of the Public Sector (project no. 100786). It brings together seven partner organisations from five European countries – Denmark, Norway, Latvia, Estonia and the United Kingdom – to explore the digital transformation of law enforcement and its impact on crime detection and prevention. It aims to identify and critically

Decolonising the City (DtC): co-designing a participatory arts-based research toolkit with migrant communities in Athens, Greece (Anna Papoutsi, Penny Travlou and Antonis Vradis)

Decolonising the City (DtC) is a Knowledge Mobilisation Award funded by the Urban Studies Foundation (USF). DtC follows on from our 2019 USF seminar series (Copenhagen, Barcelona, Athens), which brought together academics and practitioners to examine existing migrant welcoming practices and reached two findings. First: academic knowledge needs to be co-produced with the communities it addresses, in ways that are inclusive, relevant and useful to them. Second: this very idea of “urban belonging” is rapidly changing. In this moment of dual transition, migrants settle in European cities (often not their preferred destination) while receiving societies are faced with the legacies