Anita Strasser

Staff details

Position

SeNSS ESRC post-doctoral Fellow

Anita is a visual sociologist, photographer and writer who has worked with many communities on creative projects.

Anita Strasser is a SENSS Post-doctoral Fellow at the Department of Media, Communications and Cultural Studies. For her CHASE-AHRC funded PhD in Visual Sociology, Anita worked with Deptford housing campaigners and residents on a community arts project called Deptford is Changing to make visible and audible their experiences of gentrification-induced displacement. The repeated public enactments of these counternarratives on a blog, various social media and alternative media, as well as through the publication and launch of a book contributed to changes in planning proposals and other victories for residents. Anita's thesis 'Participating in Radical Visual Sociology: Supporting housing activism through gentrification and displacement research' (https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/34788/) examines the processes involved when academic research is instrumentalised for political struggle. Her current SENSS Post-doctoral Fellowship is focused on writing a series of articles from her thesis.

Academic qualifications

PhD Visual Sociology, Goldsmiths University of London 2024
MA Photography and Urban Cultures, Goldsmiths University of London 2015
MA Applied Linguistics and English Language Teaching, King's College London 2012
Licentiate Diploma in Teaching English as a Second Language, Trinity College London 2007

Research interests

Anita is interested in creative and participative research methods, research for social justice, oral histories, communities, place and belonging, and urban regeneration. She has worked with multiple communities on a variety of creative projects to bring about meaningful change. For one project, for example, she used participatory action research to research her neighbours’ experiences of living in ‘their’ block of flats. Finding that people wanted to meet their neighbours and make community spaces more liveable, she organised guerilla gardening and decorating and used story-telling, community photography and a site-specific exhibition to facilitate a sense of community, belonging and solidarity. https://anitastrasser.com/OXENHAMHOUSELANDINGPAGE.htm

For another project (her PhD), Anita worked with housing campaigners, community artists, residents and green space activists on a 2-year community arts project to highlight and enact their experiences of gentrification-induced displacement in the public sphere. This involved a whole range of methods such as photography, model building, zine-making, drawing, interviewing, workshops, discussions, as well as writing and publishing, working with participants to support their housing activism and effect change. The collaboration resulted in an increase of the percentage of social housing, the saving of some green space, better relocation offers for some residents and other small successes. https://deptfordischanging.wordpress.com/

Anita is also interested in walking as an art, research and pedagogical practice. In 2020, she published a book in German which was the result of an oral history and photography project, visibilising the people living, working and walking in this mountain range in the Austrian/Bavarian Alps where Anita grew up. She is currently writing the book 'Mountain walking as research practice: a journey in to the Stone Sea', which tells the story of her research. https://anitastrasser.com/STONESEA.htm

Featured publications

2024: Visibilising gentrification-induced displacement: on the role of a socially and politically engaged photographic practice in housing activism
This is a visual essay on the role of a socially and politically engaged photographic practice in housing activism

2024: Trader Tales and Deptford Lounge
This online article accompanied an exhibition about local businesses and their stories of survival and closure in difficult times

2023: (In)visible Mountain Infrastructures
This online article examines the technologies needed to keep up with increased mountain tourism in the age of climate change

2021: The Stone Sea: a walk through mountain research
This article tells a summary of Anita's research and her experience of walking in Alpine terrain

2020: Deptford is Changing: a creative exploration of the impact of gentrification
This book is the practical outcome of Anita's PhD research which contains people's experiences of gentrification-induced displacement

Grants and awards

2025: SENSS ESRC Post-doctoral Fellowship
Department of Media, Communications and Cultural Studies

2025: Winner of Rieger Doctoral Thesis Award
International Visual Sociology Association

2019: CHASE AHRC Doctoral Studies Placement Scheme as part of student doctorship
for the production, printing and publication of a book as part of my PhD

2017: CHASE AHRC Doctoral studentship

2016: Fellow of the Higher Education Academy

2015: Goldsmiths Sociology Award for Outstanding Academic Achievement
MA Photography and Urban Cultures Programme

2005: Kulturkapitalfonds Latvia (VKKF) stipend
for the photographic documentation of the theatre research project Synthesis of Voice and Movement

2005: Kulturkapitalfonds Latvia (VKKF) stipend
for the photographic documentation of multi-media arts project CW1

2003: Kultur Land Salzburg art residency
Vilnius Arts Academy, Lithuania

Professional projects

While working for Intercultural Communication at University of the Arts London, Anita conducted an impact evaluation of student sessions. She deployed a variety of visual research methods to understand how the alternative learning spaces offered by Intercultural Communication impacted on students' experience. This culminated in a highly visual report entitled: Enhancing the Student Experience: Impact Evaluation Report of Intercultural Communication student sessions at University of the Arts London (Strasser, 2024). The report can be found here: https://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk/id/eprint/22810/

In 2019, Anita co-organised (with Carla Duarte) the symposium Walking Places, which was hosted by DINÂMIA'CET-IUL, The Centre for Socio-economic and Territorial Studies at University Institute Lisbon. It brought together a diverse selection of themes and projects that considered walking as a philosophical study and its impact on human life, as a methodological tool that helps us make sense of our environment, as an embodied practice that helps us understand the world through our bodies, as an art practice and as an element of town planning and community care. See report here: https://cucrblog.wordpress.com/2019/01/18/walking-places-symposium-report-by-anita-strasser/comment-page-1/

Following this, they co-edited the Conference Proceedings:
Strasser, A. and Duarte, C. (2021) Walking Places, DINÂMIA'CET-IUL, The Centre for Socio-economic and Territorial Studies at University Institute Lisbon. ISBN: 978-989-781-309-2: https://www.dinamiacet.iscte-iul.pt/post/ebook-walking-places

Between 2017 and 2019, Anita co-organised (with Gill Golding) the annual symposium Engaging in Urban Image-making, which was hosted and supported by the Centre for Urban and Community Research at Goldsmiths. The symposium fostered dialogues about how we engage with urban life in our image-making practices in the 21st century. Through theoretical debate and a diverse selection of visual stories, the symposium addressed issues associated with the impact of neoliberal urban policies on the development of our cities. More information here: https://engaginginurbanimagemaking.wordpress.com/

Media engagements

2022: Deptford is Changing
Podcast with Professor Les Back

2020: Deptford is Changing
Podcast with Deptford Cinema

2020: Deptford is Changing
Interview with Lewisham Ledger newspaper

2020: Gary's Deptford Story
Audio Recording for Lewisham Libraries during Lockdown

2018: This Londoner is fighting to save Deptford’s community garden
Article published in Time Out Magazine

Conferences and talks

2024: Publishing as part of your research process
CHASE Encounters Conference on 'Student Success Panel', online

2024: Gentrification and Resistance in Deptford
CUCR: 30 years of urban and community research, Goldsmiths College, London

2022: Instrumentalising displacement research to stage a political (creative) intervention
British Sociological Association Annual Conference 2022 on panel: Activism in Sociology, online

2021: Documentary photography as radical urban practice: recording as a form of resistance to uneven urban change
RGS-IBG Annual International Conference 2020/21 (Royal Geographic Society with the Institute of British Geographers) on panel: Photography and the City, online

2021: Documentary photography as radical urban practice: recording as a form of resistance to uneven urban change
CHASE Encounters Conference, online

2020: Towards a Radical Sociology: bridging academia, arts and activism
CHASE Encounters Conference, Birkbeck University online

2020: Deptford is Changing: a creative exploration of the impact of gentrification
Interdisciplinary Symposium on Gentrification, Keele University, online

2019: Walking Presentation: Housing Activism in Deptford
Thinking on the Move: the possibilities and risks of walking sociologically, conference by the Sociological Review Foundation at Goldsmiths

2019: Stone Sea: a walk through mountain research
Walking Places, symposium hosted by DINÂMIA'CET-IUL – The Centre for Socio-economic and territorial studies at the University Institute Lisbon

2018: Using photography to facilitate social cohesion within a community
36th Annual Conference of the International Visual Sociology Association, Èvry, Paris

2018: Using photography to facilitate social cohesion within a community
Engaging in Urban Image-making, symposium hosted by the Centre for Urban and Community Research, Goldsmiths, London

2016: Using photography to facilitate social cohesion within a community
Memory, Place, Photography, Symposium at Centro de Informação Urbana de Lisboa (Urban Institute Lisbon)

2015: Approaching the street: perspectives on social photography
Urban Photo Fest, Goldsmiths, London

Photographic projects and exhibitions (selection)

2024 Picturing Urban and Community Research: 30 years of CUCR, Goldsmiths
2024 Trader Tales, Deptford Lounge and other Lewisham Libraries
2022 YOU are Deptford… so are WE!!!, MMX Gallery, New Cross
2019 Wolfgang Suschitzky Photography Prize Exhibition, Austrian Culture Forum, London
2017 A Neighbours’ Event: building community through socially-engaged photography, Conway Hall Ethical Society, London
2016 Memory of Places, Centro de Informação Urbana de Lisboa
2015 Framing Urban Narratives, The Greenwich Gallery
2015 Oxenham House Neighbourhood Project, Deptford
2014 Deptford High Street, Deptford Lounge,
2014 21 Years of Urban Change in Deptford, Deptford Town Hall, Goldsmiths College
2014 50 Years of Goldsmiths Sociology, Goldsmiths College
2012 Royal Hill, The Greenwich Gallery
2012 The London Villages Project, Goldsmiths College and Deptford Train Station (as part of Deptford X Contemporary Visual Arts Festival)
2010 Deptford High Street, St Nicolas Church, Deptford
2009 Eipprova 19: life in a courtyard, Saalfelden Art Festival, Austria
2009 CW II (Multi-media Project by Adam Ramejkis), Grad Tivoli (International Centre for Graphic Art), Ljubljana, Slovenia
2008 Eipprova 19: life in a courtyard, Eipprova Street Festival by The Urban Institute AND Kavarna SEM (café at Slovene Ethnographic Museum), Ljubljana, Slovenia
2006 CW I (Multi-media Project by Adam Ramejkis): Kirkby Gallery, Merseyside
2005 Synthesis of Voice and Movement: documentation of dance and research project, Latvian Music Academy, Riga
2005 The founding of the ‘Anna Lindh EURO Mediterranean Foundation for the dialogue between cultures’, Alexandria library, Egypt
2004 A Season in The Ponec, International contemporary dance festival by Tanec Praha, The Ponec Theatre, Prague