Goldsmiths - University of London

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Staff and their research interests


Centre Director Eyal Weizman
studied architecture at the Architectural Association in London and completed his PhD at the London Consortium, Birkbeck College. He was Professor of Architecture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. His work includes buildings and stage sets in Israel/Palestine and Europe. Weizman works with a variety of NGOs and Human right groups in Israel/Palestine. He co-curated the exhibition A Civilian Occupation, The Politics of Israeli Architecture, and co-edited the publication of the same title. These projects were based on his human-rights research, and were banned by the Israeli Association of Architects. They were later shown in the exhibition Terriories in New York, Berlin, Rotterdam, San Francisco, Malmoe, Tel Aviv and Ramallah. Weizman has taught, lectured and organised conferences in many institutions worldwide. His books include Lesser Evil (Verso Books, 2011), Hollow Land [ Verso Books, 2007], A Civilian Occupation [Verso Books, 2003], the series Territories 1,2 and 3, Yellow Rhythms and many articles in journals, magazines and edited books. Weizman is a regular contributor to many journals and magazines and is an editor at large for Cabinet Magazine (New York). Weizman is the recipient of the James Stirling Memorial Lecture Prize for 2006-2007. E-mail: e.weizman@gold.ac.uk

Prof. Irit Rogoff
is Professor of Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths College, and teaches with Research Architecture on all levels. Rogoff writes extensively on the conjunctions of contemporary art with critical theory with particular reference to issues of colonialism, cultural difference and performativity. She is author of Terra Infirma - Geography's Visual Culture (2000), editor of The Divided Heritage: Themes and Problems in German Modernism (1991) and co-editor, with Daniel Sherman, of Museum Culture: Histories, Theories, Spectacles (1994). Her current research project investigates audience participation in contemporary art spaces. Her book Looking Away: Participations in Visual Culture, is forthcoming.

Andy Lowe (Lecturer)

John Palmesino

is an architect and urbanist, born in Switzerland. He has established, together with Ann-Sofi Rönnskog, Territorial Agency, which has designed the integrated vision for the future of the Markermeer, in the Netherlands. He is the initiator and curator of the research project Neutrality, a multidisciplinary investigation in the territorial implications of UN policies and self-organisation processes of transformation and control of the contemporary human landscapes. He has been Head of research at ETH Zurich, Studio Basel / Contemporary City Institute, between 2003, and 2007, a research platform for the investigation of the transformation patterns of the city of the 21st Century founded by the Pritzker Prize winner architects Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron. Recent publications inlcude Switzerland–An Urban Portrait (Birkhäuser, 2007). His researches at ETH Studio Basel focus on Paris, Napoli, San Francisco, St Petersburg, Hong Kong, and the Canary Islands. Open and Closed: Transformations in the 21st Century City is the working title of his forthcoming publication. He also has co-founded multiplicity, a research network on contemporary territorial transformations. The Milan-based organisation deals with contemporary urbanism, representation of inhabited landscape transformation, visual arts and general culture. Multiplicity is a research network of architects, urbanists, social scientists, photographers, filmmakers and visual artists. His work has been exhibited at documenta11, the Biennale di Venezia, the Triennale in Milano, the KunstWerke, Berlin, the Musée d'Art Contemporaine de Paris, the Vanabbe Museum in Eindhoven, and IABR Rotterdam. He has published in many European architecture magazines and is also the co-author of USE Uncertain states of Europe (Skira 2003), MUTATIONS (Actar 2000), and Lessico Postfordista–Scenari della mutazione (Feltrinelli 2001).

Paulo Tavares

studied in architecture in Brasil and received his MA at the Centre for Research Architecture, Goldsmiths – University of London. He currently teaches at CRA and at the Laboratory of Visual Cultures – Goldsmiths, University of London. Previously he taught at the history Department of Architecture and Spatial Design in London MET. His work is chiefly concerned with media, ecology and spatial politics. He has done research on radio, air and currently works on a project about the AmaZone.

Research Fellows

Alessandro Petti, Architect
is a research architect and professor at International Art Academy of Palestine. In 2006 he obtained the title of Research Doctorate in Urbanism at the IUAV University of Venice under the supervision of Prof. Giorgio Agambem. The research was published in 2007 as book entitled "Arcipelaghi e enclave. Architettura dell'ordinamento spaziale contemporaneo" (Bruno Mondadori 2007). While at Goldsmishts, he is working on a research project entitle "Atlas of Decolonization", an architectural documentation on the re-use, re-inhabitation and subversion of colonial structures.

Ayesha Hameed
is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Centre for Research Architecture. Her PhD was completed at the Graduate Programme in Social and Political Thought at York University, where her dissertation "Bricks and Blood. The Dialectical Image of The Black Atlantic in The Colonial Metropolis" was nominated for the Faculty of Graduate Studies Dissertation Prize. A member of the No One Is Illegal Network in Montreal, Hameed's video and performance work focuses on borders in the context of sans-papiers organizing and migrant subjectivity. She has presented her work at the Banff Centre for the Arts, OBORO Gallery Montreal, Montréal Arts Interculturels (MAI), the HTMlles Festival, ISEA and elsewhere. Hameed is a former board member of Fuse Magazine, and her writing has been published in journals like Public and Topia as well as in collections such as PLACE: Location and Belonging in New Media

Research Fellows – Forensic Architecture Project

Alessandro Petti, Srdjan Jovanovic Weiss, Thomas Keenan, Anselm Franke, Susan Schuppli and John Palmesino.

Guest Faculty

Our growing Guest Faculty includes academics and practitioners whose interest and field of investigation overlaps that of the Centre. They will take part in the Centre’s activities and in its seminar programmes. In certain instances they will be available as secondary/external supervisors for our PhD students.

Avery Gordon, Professor of Sociology, University of California, Santa Barbara

Thomas Keenan, Director of Human Rights Project, Bard College, New York City

AbdouMaliq Simone, Professor of Sociology, Goldsmiths College, University of London

Fareed Armaly, artist, curator, author

Stefano Harney, Director of Global Learning and Deputy Director of the School, Queen Mary

Hito Steyrel, artist, film-maker

Laymert Garcia dos Santos, Professor of Sociology, UNICAMP, Brasil

PhD Candidates

Our PhD candidates will be involved in the teaching at MA level. They include:

Shumon Basar, architect and curator, unit master at the Architectural Association

Anselm Franke, curator, director of ExtraCity Insitute of Art, Antwerp

Joseph Grima, architect and director, Storefront Gallery for Art and Architecture, NYC

Manuel Herz, architect, director of MA program at ETH, Basel Institute

Markus Miessen, architect and Writer, unit master at the Architectural Association

Karen Mirza, artist and curator

John Palmesino, architect, curator and writer

Florian Schneider, filmmaker, new media activist

Eyal Sivan, documentary filmmaker, writer, editor

Srdjan Jovanovic Weiss, architect and writer, assistant professor at University of Pennsylvania

Beatrice Gibson, artist

Angela Melitopolous, filmmaker, artist, writer

Ines Schaber, artist

Paulo Tavares, architect and writer, course leader - MA Research Architecture, Goldsmiths. 

Philippe Zourgane, architect, writer

Nabil Ahmed, artist and writer

Füsun Türetken, architect and writer

Emanuel Licha, filmmaker

Godofredo Nobre, architect, writer and editor

Lorenzo Pezzani, artist and writer

Lawrence Abu Hamdan, artist

Charles Heller, filmmaker and writer

Kerstin Schroedinger, film-maker