Monica Degen
Dr Monica Degen is a Reader in Urban Cultural Sociology in the Political and Social Sciences Department at Brunel University London. Her research focuses on the politics of space with a particular interest in the ways sensory, temporal and emotional dimensions underpin urban culture, planning and governance. Over the years she has been working on several international funded research projects with architects, local councils, museum curators and the general public to research urban transformations and the role of experiences in framing architectural practices, everyday life and culture in cities from Doha (Qatar) to Cologne, Manchester, Barcelona and London.
In 2016 she was awarded a British Academy Fellowship to research ‘Timescapes of Urban Change’. More recently she has been working on developing digital approaches to capture the sense of place of cities and the ways in which urban environments are stratified by power relations, see Sensory Smithfield and Sensory Cities Network.
Monica has published her work extensively in international journals. She is author of Sensing Cities (Routledge, 2008) and co-author of La Metaciudad: Barcelona (Anthropos, 2008). Her forthcoming book (co-authored with G. Rose, Oxford University) “A New Urban Aesthetic: experiencing urban change digitally” (Bloomsbury) examines how digital visualisations from Instagram to phone apps or CGI’s are reconfiguring sensory urban experiences in powerful and differentiated ways, deeply transforming our engagements with the city.
