Inge Daniels wins AHRC Research Grant

Photo Credit: Maria Salaru

St Cross Fellow Dr Inge Daniels has won an AHRC Research Grant for her project 'Disobedient Buildings'. This project, which began in January and will last for four years, explores how the inhabitants of aging tower blocks are striving to create safe and comfortable homes and how ordinary citizens conceptualise and confront macro-level concepts such as welfare, health and wellbeing on the ground within the context of widening inequalities and insecurities that seem to characterise contemporary urban life. This will lead to a participatory exhibition in London, an edited book/exhibition catalogue, a visual methods toolkit, three documentary films to be screened in festivals worldwide, a website, and an advisory document for local governments.

The project takes place in three European countries: the UK, Romania and Sweden. Each fieldwork location represents a different type of European welfare state epitomised by the degree of implementation of neo-liberal reforms over the past three decades. The holistic research design centres around the production of the participatory exhibition, which will invites research participants and museum visitors, whether lay people or professionals linked with the housing industry, to become active contributors to the study.

The project challenges the assumption that exhibitions are finished products to disseminate research findings. Rather, it will examine the potential of these dynamic spaces to generate new thinking beyond initial research.

Riley Lewis
5 March 2020