• Professor Alan Penn (Dean of the Bartlett Faculty of the Built Environment, UCL). “Architectural space and social action: how does the built environment relate to human society?” (November 2016).
• Professor Adrian Lahoud (Dean of School of Architecture – Royal College of Art). “Architecture’s Anthropology” (November 2017).
• Professor Derek Gregory (Peter Wall Distinguished Professor at the University of British Columbia) The Spaces of Modern War (March 2019).

Training – Introduction to Geographic Informations Systems (GIS) (on 15/06/2016 // and on 13-15/05/17; 11-13/11/17)

• GIS is increasingly being used in many disciplines to help solve a wide range of “real world” problems and advance the current state of research by exploring the spatial properties of events and processes. The overall aim of this training session was to provide an applied introduction to the use of GIS. The training provided an introduction to the theory and practice of GIS and an introduction to a range of methods for collection, management and interpretation of spatial data. Indicative topics:
  • Introduction to the fundamental principles of GIS;
  • Data sources and methods of data acquisition
  • Types of spatial data, working with raster and vector data
  • Mapping (how to create and transform maps),
  • Elementary database management

Workshops

• KISS International Symposium: Cities Against Nationalism? This event hosted by KISS and the School of Anthropology and Conservation, brought a group of leading international scholars to investigate the relatively under-theorised research field of urban geopolitics and nationalism. The symposium explored the rising tensions between national and urban regimes, with particular reference to the plight of minorities and immigrants, for more info see here.

• • Francesco Chiodelli, Gran Sasso Science Institute, Italy, Resisting exclusionary nationalism-populism in the urban arena?
  • Abigail Gilbert, Barking and Dagenham Council, London, UK, What role for “New Municipalism” in addressing the Populist Impulse? 
  • Igor Calzada, University of Oxford, UK, Small European Stateless City-Regions: Constructing (Civic/Metropolitanised) Nationalism?
  • Amny Athamny, University of Toronto, Canada, Dutch Cities: Going Dutch or Not?
  • Nufar Avni, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel, Between the national and the urban: The double-edged sword of Neighbourhood Councils in East Jerusalem
  • James Anderson, Queen’s University Belfast, UK, How do cities shape nationalist conflicts?
  • Nada Elfeituri, UCL, UK, The Re-Emergence of Traditional Governance in Cities of the Middle East and North Africa, The Case of Benghazi Libya
  • Gruia Badescu, University of Konstanz, Germany, Towards syncretic place-making: Architectural practice and resistance to nationalism.
  • Keynote I: Oren Yiftachel, Ben Gurion University and UCL, UK, Urban Displaceability and the rise of (Neo)Nationalism.
  • Keynote II: Michael Gentile, University of Oslo, Geopolitical Fault-Line Cities in a world of Contested Cities.
  • Vote of thanks: Jonathan Rock Rokem, University of Kent.

• Supported by KISS, Organized by SoCriL (KLS) on the work of Didier Fassin (French anthropologist, sociologist and physician) (13/06/2016) – Professor Didier Fassin spoke on his most recent work on Prisons (L’Ombre du monde. Une anthropologie de la condition carcérale, Seuil, Paris, 2015).Other books include The Empire of Trauma: An Inquiry Into the Condition of Victimhood (2009), Humanitarian Reason: A Moral History of the Present (2011), Enforcing Order: An Ethnography of Urban Policing (2013), and At the Heart of the State: The Moral World of Institutions (2015). Colleagues from Kent and elsewhere gave papers on his work or related work. More information on Professor Fassin’s work and biography can be found here.

• KISS Annual Workshop 2017-18 (July 2018): Researching and Teaching Spatially at the University of Kent.
  • Gabriele D’Adda – The response of PAH – Plataforma Afectados por la Hipoteca (Platform of people affected by mortgage) to the precarization of the right housing: the case of Barcelona
  • Francesco Salvini – Precarity, University Spatial Logic
  • Eleanor Jupp – Spaces of Austerity and Activism in the UK
  • Mia Tamarin – Water commodification as conflict pacification: the case of Palestine – Israel
  • Gian Giacomo Fusco – Law, Space and Discipline: The case of the Ghetto
  • Vince Miller – An overview of my space-related work
  • Glenn Bowman – Fieldwork, Identification and Perspectival Reversals: Participant Observation in the Old City of Jerusalem
  • Jessica Smith – Spatial Dynamics of Registration: An Ethnographic Study of Religion, Gender, and Locality at the Beaney House of Art & Knowledge
  • Helen Carr – Thinking Grenfell Tower Through Space And Time
  • Thanos Zartaloudis – The Archipelago of Protocols
  • Robert Fish – Public dialogue as resistance and transformation: my work in the environmental arena
  • Naomi Woods – A legal research student taking up space
  • Juha Virtanen – Poetry as/and Resistance
  • Rocio von Jungenfeld – Flows and the Perception of Environments
  • Aki Pasoulas – Research in progress
  • Roundtable – Our Research as a Space of Critical Study and Resistance with David Ayers & Thanos Zartaloudis

A Concert organized by the School of Music and Fine Art (21/05/2016)

• World Premiere Concert of Denis Smalley’s commissioned work by the School of Music and Fine Art, celebrating his 70th Birthday and preceded by a discussion with Simon Emmerson. Organized by Dr Aki Pasoulas (Kent).

Research Seminars

• Professor Sian Sullivan (Bath Spa University). What’s ontology got to do with it? Nature, knowledge and the ‘green economy’. February 2016
• Professor Matthew Gandy (University of Cambridge). From Urban Ecology to ecological urbanism: an ambiguous trajectory. March 2016
• Professor Andrew Bevan (UCL), Long Term Mediterranean Settlement Dynamics and Container Culture. March 2016
• Dr Jamie Lorimar, (University of Oxford). Wildlife in the Anthropocene: Conservation after Nature. May 2016
• Dr Monica Manolescu (University of Strasbourg). Rome/Passaic: Eternal Cities. On Robert Smithson’s A Tour of the Monuments of Passaic, New Jersey. November 2016
• Professor Jane Rendell (UCL), “Site-Writing: transitional spaces in architecture and psychoanalysis. December 2016
• Dr Platon Issaias (Royal College of Art, London). “From asset to debt and dispossession, or why the Troika cares about two-bedroom flats in Athens” February 2017
• Professor Roderick Coover (Temple University, Philadelphia) “Virtual Reality, Database Cinema, GIS and Literary Navigation: Enacting Spatial Experience and Its Narratives Through Digital Arts And Research” March 2017
• Professor William Watkin (Brunel University) “The Philosophy of the Frontier. Reflections on the notion of the frontier, migration and the refugee movements”. May 2017
• Dr David Henig (SAC, Kent) “Living on the Frontline” November 2017
• Professor Helen Carr & Laura Binger (KLS, Kent) “Taking Responsibility after Grenfell” December 2017
• Professor Ross Adams (Iowa State University) – “Circulation and Urbanization” February 2018
• Professor Ross Adams (Iowa State University) – “Becoming-infrastructural: Power, Space and the Body” February 2018
• Iain Sinclair – The Last London, March 2018

Film Screenings and Q&As

• Lagos Wide and Close: An Interactive Journey into an Exploding City by Bregtje van der Haak, October 2015.
• Robinson in Space by Patrick Keiller, November 2015.
• The Pruitt-Igoe Myth by Chad Freidrichs, February 2016.
• Sur les Toits by Nicolas Drolc, June 2016.
• Berlin Babylon by Hubertus Siegert, June 2016.
• The Public House by Sarah Turner, June 2017.
• Dead the Ends, by Benedict Seymour, May 2018.
• Generation Revolution, by Cassie Quarless and Usayd Unis, July 2018.

Labs and Readings

• Mike Davis ‘Fortress Los Angeles – The Militarization of Urban Space’
• Jane Rendell ‘The Transitional Space of Interdisciplinarity’ [in Daniel Hinchcliffe, Jane Calow and Laura Mansfield (eds), Speculative Strategies In Interdisciplinary Arts Practice, (2014)]