From wastelands to islands of waste: Journeys through marginal spaces in Tokyo and London

The margins of the late-modern metropolis have long formed a somewhat ambiguous site for environmental and social scientists alike. 

In this Urban Salon event we embark on a journey from the wastelands of London to the islands of waste in Tokyo. Along the way we will chart the complex ecological, social, cultural and political geometries of urban interstice, while offering a comparative approach which moves beyond Anglo/Eurocentric accounts of marginal spaces.

About the Participants

Kumiko Kiuchi is Associate Professor at Institute for Liberal Arts, Institute of Science Tokyo. She completed her DPhil. at University of Sussex in English Literature. She has published a number of articles on modernism in Europe (especially on genre and intersemiotic translation) and a regular contributor to the English literary magazine SNOW. She was the project manager of 'Screening Patrick Keiller's Robinson Trilogy in Japan' and an editor and contributor to the booklet Landscapes in Time:Patrick Keiller's  'Robinson Trilogy (2015). She is currently working on a comparative study on the narratological and geopolitical functions of rivers and bridges in films featuring London and Tokyo.

Ben Platt is a ESRC Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Oxford. He is primarily a cultural geographer with interests in landscape, aesthetics and power. His PhD research explored emerging approaches to landscape urbanism in East London - with particular focus on marginal spaces and ruderal ecologies. Ben has also written on the notion of weird geographies and ecologies. 

Matthew Gandy is Professor of Cultural and Historical Geography at the University of Cambridge, and Fellow of Kings College Cambridge. He is a cultural, urban, and environmental geographer with particular interests in landscape, infrastructure, and more recently bio-diversity. His most recent book Natura Urbana: Ecological Constellations in Urban Space is winner of a 2023 John Brinckerhoff Jackson Prize awarded by the Foundation for Landscape Studies and UVA School of Architecture. He has also directed documentary films including the award-winning Natura Urbana: the Brachen of Berlin.

Reserve your space here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/from-wastelands-to-islands-of-waste-tickets-1217780216409?aff=oddtdtcreator