environmentalism, design activism & ecology - materials, meaning & making - building(s) & place - design anthropology & ethnography
In my research and teaching I am interested in learning from people about how they experience, perceive, care for, envision and create their shared environments. To this end, I have worked extensively with ecological builder-dwellers in the USA and Scotland, attending to issues of power, art, labour, value and social imagination. My doctorate, awarded in 2009 from the University of Aberdeen, addresses these subjects and they remain central to my research and teaching.
My recent work is concerned with materials and traces, with architecture’s materials and social orchestrations, and the idea of thinking-through-making. I have been considering the vibrant materials that make up the Scottish built environment, and the stories, lives, entanglements and skills that a focus upon them brings to the fore. In other newer threads of my research I've been looking at the architecture of art schools for thinking about place and community and creativity, and also collaborating with colleagues Judith Winter (MMU, Manchester) and Cristián Simonetti (Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile) on projects to do with concrete and the Anthropocene. At ECA, with Mike Inglis and Cath Keay, I am collaborating on research and exhibitions to do with Art Extraordinary and alternative creativities and environments. Throughout, my research methods involve playful experiment and participation in artistic practices of making.
I lecture on my work internationally, publish my writing, and exhibit photographic and installation work. I have produced exhibitions, run workshops and seminars and, in 2011, I organised an international conference here at the Univeristy of Edinburgh funded by the Mellon Foundation on the theme of the senses and environmental values.
