Culture and Society
Culture and Society Research Cluster
The study of our human worlds
The "Culture and Society" research cluster in SNBE combines expertise across four academic disciplines—Architecture, Human Geography, Planning and Archaeology—which share a common concern for exploring past and present connections between cultures and societies at varying spatial scales, from the local to global, and developing collaborative and impactful research programmes addressing major research challenges in the humanities and social sciences.
Read more Read lessAcademic and Research Staff
Please find below a list of the staff connected to this Research Cluster and their key research interests.
STAFF |
KEY RESEARCH INTERESTS |
|---|---|
| Dr Merav Amir | Dr Amir is a cultural and political geographer with particular interest in critical perspectives on security, processes of border making, geographies of embodiment, critical cultural analysis and feminist and queer theory. |
| Dr Philip Boland | Philip Boland has a varied set of research interests. These are centred on the following areas of planning theory and practice: neoliberal urbanism; local and regional development; city branding; illegal drugs; economics of religion; cultural events. |
| Dr Dirk Brandherm | Dr Brandherm's research is concerned with exploring the dynamics of societal change in later prehistory, particularly in the Chalcolithic and in the Bronze and Iron Ages of Western Europe and the Mediterranean. Through the use of scientific dating techniques he also works on refining the chronologies that inform our understanding of the processes underpinning these dynamics. |
| Dr Gemma Catney | Gemma is a Population and Social Geographer, with particular interests in ethnic inequalities, ethnic diversity, residential segregation and internal migration. She is also fascinated by how neighbourhoods both shape, and are shaped by, the experiences of those who live in them. She is mostly, although not exclusively, a quantitative social scientist, but thinking critically about numbers is central to her research approach. |
| Dr Oliver Dunnett | As a cultural, historical and political geographer, Dr Dunnett's research interests focus on the ways in which cultures of outer space, science and technology are connected to questions of place, landscape and identity in a variety of local, regional and national contexts. He has concurrent research interests in areas including literary geographies, popular geopolitics and the history of geography. |
| Dr Diarmid Finnegan |
Dr Finnegan's research interests include the cultural history and geography of the life and earth sciences, with a particular emphasis on religious responses to scientific developments in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. |
| Dr Nuala Flood | Dr Flood's overall academic aim, which she seeks to achieve through a number of research, education and citizenship activities, is to tackle the ecological crisis through the codesign of place-based, spatial, context specific and environmentally beneficial solutions. My research interests include codesign methods, ecotopian design fictions, urban interventionist practices and climate change adaptation of the built environment. |
| Dr Patrick Gleeson | Dr Gleeson is a landscape archaeologist interested in the later prehistoric and medieval periods of Europe. His research specialises in the first millennium AD, and currently focuses on themes of kingship, religious transformation, cult and governance in Northern Europe. |
| Prof Audrey Horning | Key research interests include comparative colonialism in the Atlantic World, the integration of archaeology and conflict transformation, historical archaeology, archaeological theory and ethics, and community engagement. |
| Prof Nuala Johnson | Her research falls into three strands. Firstly, she develops the conceptual and empirical dimensions of the performance of social memory with respect to public monuments, museums and heritage venues. The second research theme focuses on the role of place in the articulation of nationalist identities and has been rooted in analyses of education policy and language, literary geographies and identity, and the role of the heritage industry in representing a nation’s past. The third strand of her research congregates around the historical geographies of science, in particular the development and design of botanical gardens as sites in which the relationship between science and beauty in the formation of natural history knowledge is practised. |
| Dr Gul Kacmaz Erk | Gul's research interests include: Cinema and the City; Architecture and Film; Architecture and (Forced/Voluntary) Migration; Minorities and the City; Urban space/Architectural space/Film space/Sci-fi space; Refugees and Home; Digital Mapping in the Humanities; Architectural Media and Representation; Architectural Design Education. |
| Dr Satish Kumar | Dr Kumar's research includes colonial and postcolonial studies focused on South Asia, covering many areas across social sciences and humanities. He is also engaged in key issues of international development and its ramifications across urban and rural contexts. |
| Dr Sarah Lappin | Dr Sarah Lappin's research concentrates on manifestations of architectural identity in 20th century on the island of Ireland. Together with Dr Gascia Ouzounian, (Oxford University), she is co-director of the research group Recomposing the City. The group asks how a consideration of sound and sound art methods can impact on the making of cities. |
| Prof Keith Lilley (Research Cluster Director) | Dr Lilley's research covers the fields of: Historical/cultural geography; Landscape history/archaeology; Histories of cartography/archaeology of cartography; Urban morphology/urban history/urban archaeology; Heritage studies/heritage practice. Current projects include combining GIS and prosopography in analysing historic maps of Britain and Ireland, and tracing global histories of field-surveying and geodetics through landscapes and maps. |
| Prof David Livingstone | Prof Livingstone researches in the areas of sustainable development of energy, water and environment systems. |
| Prof Chris Lloyd | Geographical Information Science, Population Geography and Historical Geography |
| Prof Caroline Malone | Caroline Malone undertakes research on the early societies of the central Mediterranean. Her work includes excavations on Maltese temples and burial sites, Sicilian settlements and Italian hillforts. Most recently, she has completed a 5-year ERC project exploring environmental change and the impact this has on islands and communities. She also researches on prehistory across Europe and Britain, and in particular, studies museums and heritage sites related to prehistory. |
| Dr Augustine Martire | Dr Martire's architectural research interest is in the relationship between people and places within the built environment. She specifically researches the significance and value of mixed streets and their role in providing essential public spaces. Her research is underpinned by ethnographic and urban morphology methods. |
| Dr Wes Megarry | Key research areas include the Prehistoric landscape archaeology, specifically the archaeology of islands; the application and use of non-invasive technologies in archaeological research and heritage management; and the intersection between climate change and cultural heritage; specifically, climate change adaptation, traditional ecological knowledge and vulnerability assessment of cultural heritage sites. |
| Prof Eileen Murphy | Professor Murphy's research concentrates particularly on human skeletal populations from prehistoric Russia and from all periods in Ireland. She is particularly interested in the use of osteoarchaeological and palaeopathological information to help further understanding of the daily lives and experiences of past people. Her research has also explored the social dimensions of funerary practices, particularly in relation to minority and deviant burial rites. She has undertaken a substantial amount of research exploring children and childhood in the past, using various archaeological approaches, and has a strong interest in advancing community-based archaeology. |
| Dr Chantelle Niblock | Dr Niblock is interested in exploring the influence of digital technologies across several themes, namely, Creative Design Processes, Prototyping Architecture, and Architectural Heritage. Her research focuses on the utilisation of 3D laser scanning and immersive technology (including augmented and virtual reality) to create interactive archives and spatial narratives of architectural heritage, from scaled model to historic building. |
| Dr Urmi Sengupta | Dr Sengupta's research focuses on urban development, poverty and inequality, contestations over access to land and housing in cities of global south. In particular, she is interested in how citizens articulate their rights to the city and the prospects for its implementation. |
| Dr Ian Shuttleworth | Research interests include migration, mobility, segregation, longitudinal analysis, and mobile phone data. |
| Dr Christian Silva | Dr Silva's research interests have been centred on the explorations of contemporary patterns of urban growth and change, urban sprawl and (post) suburbanisation, and the role of 'Interstitial Spaces', vacant lands and leftover zones in restructuring city-regions. |
| Prof Aileen Stockdale | Prof Aileen Stockdale's research expertise is on the changing demography of rural areas. This focuses on rural mobility (in- and out-migration) and immobility (staying) and, in particular, the decision-making processes (including partner negotiations by couples) and economic and social consequences for rural destination and origin areas. Her research also includes strong life course and gender perspectives. |
| Dr Tristan Sturm | Tristan Sturm researches apocalyptic geopolitics--both religious and secular--relating to climate change and the Middle East. He is also interested in critical public health, specifically lead exposure. |
| Dr Richard Waldron | Dr Waldron's research investigates the interaction between the urban planning system and private market forces in the built environment, with a particular focus on housing. Richard is particularly interested in understanding the linkages between urban planning and housing policy and the deepening relationship between the financial system, the development sector and the state. |