Natanya Mark
Research title: What are the Possibilities and Limitations for Co-creation in Qualitative Urban Research? Extending participation ‘after’ co-creation methodological timeframes in Glasgow and London.
Research Summary
My PhD research considers grassroots creative spaces as spaces of hope through a sensory urban ethnographic methodology attuned to the emergent present. In my research I pay close attention, through a collaborative and sensorially grounded utopian method (Levitas 2013), to the ways in which DIY creative spaces act out possible futures in the present, and how projects work with radical hope (Lear 2006) and with failure endemic to such an enquiry.
This approach stems from my experience co-founding a project called Local Senses in which people with varying levels of vision collaboratively respond to the experience of navigating outdoor urban environments together in London. It also draws on my work as co-director of F.A.T. Studio C.I.C. where I co-founded a DIY creative space (2021-2023) based in a meanwhile site on the Old Kent Road in South East London.
Supervisors
Grants
- Scottish Graduate School of Social Science (SGSSS / UKRI) PhD Scholarship 2025 - 2029
- Scottish Graduate School of Social Science (SGSSS / UKRI) Masters of Research Scholarship 2024 - 2025
Conferences
- Pipe Dreams: Festival of Community; Ethnografilm Festival 2026, Paris
- Pipe Dreams: Festival of Community; Visualista Film Festival 2025, The International Visual Sociology Association (IVSA), South Korea