Professor Karen Jones

THE LUNGS OF THE CITY 

The Lungs of the City – Research at Kent

This project (funded by the Wellcome Trust) looks at the city park as a place of health and wellbeing across a global geography. Our team of researchers explore the specific park histories of three iconic world cities, London, New Delhi and Shanghai, to see how urban green space has been woven into the fabric of the modern city.

Dr Lavinia Brydon

IMAGINING ORDINARY CITIES

Imagining Ordinary Cities – Research at Kent

This research project investigates literary, visual and performance works that are inspired by ‘ordinary’ South African cities, such as Makhanda and Pretoria/Tshwane. The project also focuses on artworks and cultural interventions that explore the prosaic aspects of daily life in larger metropolitan areas, such as Cape Town, a city that has recently gained more traction in art and scholarship. In doing so, the project will further shift focus away from the speed and spectacle of cities (including the spectacle of violence) towards the everyday practices that form ordinary urban space.

Dr Kaori Nagai

RETHINKING FABLES IN THE AGE OF GLOBAL ENVIRONMENTAL CRISIS

Rethinking Fables – Research at Kent

This is a two-year project funded by the AHRC Networking Scheme (June 2023 to May 2025). It aims to bring together scholars, animal experts, artists, theorists, and practitioners of the fable, to examine the significance of animal (and other nonhuman) fables, and to develop new theories and practices of the genre.  We will also collaborate to produce new fables, befitting to tell stories of our times, taking seriously diverse non-human forces that shape the stories of our world, such as climate change and AI as talking nonhumans, drawing on fables of different cultural and linguistic traditions, including non-European and indigenous fables.