Department of Management, Politics and Philosophy

My PhD project is about urban development and reactions to as well as participation in change among local actors. Starting from a specific site in Copenhagen, Refshaleøen, I research the variety of ways in which actors are attached to space. I study the politics of urban development through such affective attachments and how they give shape to space. I am particularly interested in the coordinative power of culture (or the ‘creativity dispositif’) in giving actors the capacity to participate in urban development, but also how such participation is marked by for instance nostalgia, loss and optimism. I am interested in how concerns are voiced not as deliberate acts of resistance or political participation, but as forms of engagement in and with space. Therefore, my project also explores a broad notion of critique or resistance as I research the strategies employed by different actors to maintain themselves and their ways of attaching to space.

I use qualitative research methods to study these social issues and I am particularly interested in spatial and material analysis. In my PhD I use walking conversations and other performative mapping and documentation methods.

I have a background in literature, urban studies and performance studies. I have worked as a consultant in urban consultancy agencies. As an external lecturer at Roskilde University, Department of Communication and Arts I taught courses on performative urbanism and worked as a research assistant on feminist epistemology in material learning.