Edward Hollis‘ research and creative practice focusses on building stories and narrative structures connecting time, folk tale, and the built environment; and engages with heritage activitism. Between 2012-18 Ed was involved with experimental plans to re-occupy the ruins of Gillespie Kidd and Coia’s modernist seminary at Cardross in Argyll. He is a member of the educational advisory board of the Scottish Historic Buildings Trust. Since 2018 he has been working with the inhabitants of Asansol, a coal-mining town in West Bengal, India, to find innovative ways to celebrate their industrial heritage through storytelling and study.

 

 

Ruxandra-Iulia Stoica is an architect and urbanist specialising in the historic environment. Her research, teaching and consultancy work at the Scottish Centre for Conservation Studies focus on the evolving field of theory and methodology of conservation approaches. Ruxandra explores theory, philosophy and methodologies for evaluating urban fabric as a dynamic system of both physical (man-made & natural) and social elements, their implications for assessing cultural significance, and the construct of heritage designations such as World Heritage.

 

Penny Travlou is Senior Lecturer in Cultural Geography and Theory at the Edinburgh School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, University of Edinburgh. Her research focuses on social justice, the commons, collaborative practices, cultural landscapes, and decolonial epistemologies, with fieldwork across Europe and Latin America, including ethnographic work on cultural commons in Colombia. She has contributed to international projects funded by the EU and UK Research Councils and has widely published on decolonial urban knowledges, the commons and collaborative creative practices. 

 

Suzy Fitzpatrick is a Research Fellow at Edinburgh College of Art, working on the CUMET project and focusing on the Granton area of North Edinburgh. Her academic research and teaching cross the disciplinary fields of cultural geography, urban planning and heritage studies. An enduring interest in resident’s perceptions and forms of resistance to urban change at a local level. This is a thread running from her PhD on the effect of the European Capital of Culture 2008 upon the host city of Liverpool’s existing cultural infrastructure to the effect of Glasgow’s 2014 Commonwealth Games on various neighbourhoods in the East end of the City. Her own current research project ‘Days of the New Town’ aligns with CUMET in its interest in revealing and facilitating contemporary grassroots heritage narratives about the early life, and subsequent evolution of the landscape architecture of England’s last wave of New Towns, built in the 1970’s.