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Banister Fletcher Global Fellowship

As the significance of shared culture and meaningful exchange between the cities of London and Paris comes increasingly to the fore, the University of London has launched a new global fellowship opportunity piloted by the University of London Institute in Paris in collaboration with the University’s leading centres of research and learning in urban history, culture, design and theory, including the Institute of Historical Research, the London Policy and Research partnership, as well as the Bartlett School of Architecture (UCL) and Queen Mary University of London (QMUL). 

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Description

This Global Fellowship aims to build experientially embedded research that reflects and informs the ways urban environments are responding to deepening inequalities and environmental crisis, as well as the effects of rising nationalism. It invites interdisciplinary work to help shape new understandings of the variable triangulations of public works, private investment, and civil-society action. As patterns of labour and mobility change, as the imperatives of climate action and disease control increasingly shape urban policy and infrastructure, how are cities adapting, transforming, failing, and thriving?

The fellowship seeks in particular to foster new attention to urban dynamics of welfare, well-being, and solidarity. Much scholarship focuses on macro-factors in global city analysis, stressing the intensification of competition between urban centres and particular configurations of rivalry and/or emulation, all patterns that tend to dominate the structure of work between Paris and London. Yet community-led innovation and knowledge are increasingly shaping urban and design cultures, generating new vernaculars and alternative forms of circular economies or more or less autonomous structures of solidarity. Can these processes by mapped from what are often perceived as ‘only’ local dynamics into a transnational frame, and what do we gain in doing so?

The Banister Fletcher Global Fellowship invites scholars to place alternative forms and spaces of knowledge production at the heart of proposals that may build on research and creative practice developed in relation to cultures and histories of the built environment across the world, but also more directly within the perimeter of the Paris-London framework. It encourages candidates to consider how their work will both benefit from sustained consideration of this Paris-London framework, while also contributing to the elucidation of it. It also anticipates the importance of historical perspectives and welcomes proposals anchored in the city as archive.

Please note that applications are currently closed, as the fellowship has been awarded for the 2023-24 academic year. Please view the programmes below.

Distant Islands, Spectral Cities

Olivier Marboeuf will take up the fourth edition of the Banister Fletcher Fellowship for 2023-24. 'Distant Islands, Spectral Cities' will examine the 'boomerang effect' (Aimé Césaire) of 'the invention of the Caribbean' on Western societies. In particular, it will look at all the human, cultural, economic and epistemological consequences of this 'invention' on the infrastructures and sociabilities of the capitals of the major empires that contributed to it: Paris and London. A series of texts and interviews, published online monthly beginning in January 2024, will announce progressively the contents and problematics of the programme, as well as participants. The main series of events – which will include presentations, workshops, lecture-performances, listening sessions, film screenings and walks – will take place in Paris from 22 to 27 April 2024. 

 


 

Distant Islands, Spectral Cities

Olivier Marboeuf's programme examines the 'boomerang effect' (Aimé Césaire) of 'the invention of the Caribbean' on Western societies. It looks at all the human, cultural, economic and epistemological consequences of this 'invention' on the infrastructures and sociabilities of the capitals of the major empires that contributed to it: Paris and London.

Urban Life at the Extensions

Professor Simone’s Fellowship Programme is entitled Urban Life at the Extensions. It engages in collaborative work with the Beyond Inhabitation Lab and a number of frontline associations and networks in the Paris area to build a series of seminars and joint investigations. It explores the notion of ‘extensions’ in ways that themselves exceed the focus on extension of city form to suggest that going beyond can take place anywhere and is manifested not only in new territorial formations but also in ways of living and inhabiting.

 


 

Urban Life at the Extensions

Professor AbdouMaliq Simone's programme that will engage collaborative work with the Beyond Inhabitation Lab and a number of frontline associations and networks in the Paris area to build a series of seminars and collaborative investigations.

Commons, Wilds, Infrastructures

For the second iteration of the Banister Fletcher Fellowship, the University of London Institute in Paris in partnership with the Bartlett School of Architecture (UCL) and Queen Mary University of London (QMUL), is delighted to welcome Dr John Bingham-Hall to lead a programme of research that will explore some of the implications of the new focus on ‘green infrastructures’ as they are playing out in the cities of Paris and London. You can check the programme by clicking on the image below.

 


 

Commons, Wilds and Infrastructures

Discover Dr John Bingham-Hall's programme that will explore some of the implications of the new focus on ‘green infrastructures’ as they are playing out in the cities of Paris and London.

The Quantification of Urban Space

During her Banister Fletcher Fellowship, Dr Min Kyung Lee curated a series of events that aimed to understand the social, cultural and epistemological consequences of the comprehensive quantification project on the urban forms and inhabitants of metropoles such as London, Paris and beyond. Her lectures focused on the Second Empire Paris and Interwar France, while the two panel conversations she convened brought together perspectives from around the world and a range of disciplines from law to data science to art and architectural history.  

 


 

The Quantification of Urban Space Programme

Discover Dr Min Kyung Lee’s, first Banister Fletcher fellow, programme on the Quantification of Urban Space.