This Thursday (22nd October 2015) we are pleased to welcome our next Department of Methodology Seminar Series speaker, Dr Sue Pell (Assistant Professor of Communications, School of Communications, Arts & Social Sciences, The American International University in London [Richmond]). Please find the abstract for her talk and information for attending the seminar below.

Activist archives which collect the documents of anti-gentrification campaigns occupy a critical position in which to study contemporary urban politics. They are interesting not only for their record of contested urban redevelopment projects, but also because the practice of archiving has itself become a strategy used within anti-gentrification struggles. Drawing on cases studies from Vancouver (Canada) and London (UK), this talk outlines uses of activist archives in the study of anti-gentrification campaigns. It describes discursive and ethnographic approaches that enable archives to be considered simultaneously as source material for history production and as spaces of practice. Woven through the discussion of the two case studies is an exploration of the politics of knowledge production. It draws attention to how knowledge production is configured in gentrification struggles, in archives, and in research itself.

Venue: LRB 4.02 (4th Floor, LSE Library – see here for campus map).
Date and time: Thursday 22 October 2015, 16:15 – 17:45.
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If you would like further information on the seminars, please email methodology.admin@lse.ac.uk.

To download the audio recording of this seminar presentation click here.

Dr Alasdair Jones is Assistant Professor in the Department of Methodology at LSE.