In my research, I aim to discover the correlation between the architecture and urban design of places used for displacement management purposes. The term displacement refers to both indirect and direct forced movement that produce a spatial output in a new location, including but not limited to migrants, refugees, and internally displaced persons (IDPs), host communities, and displacement managers. In my research I am primarily treating displacement management as policy and practice of responding entities with a degree of managing authority – whether self-initiated or driven by its mandate: United Nations agencies, International Non-Governmental Organizations (INGO), national immigration agencies, or local municipal authorities, as a few examples. Moreover, through the lens of reception I explore the contingency planning part of displacement management and ask whether arrival infrastructure of refugees and migrants and localized contingency plans for domestic populations intersect. The contested spaces produced by displacement calls for giving meaning to the term Spatial mediation and highlights the urgency of re-spatializing these policies and integrating them into urban planning.

The thesis will be written in the format of a collection of articles, commonly called a compilation thesis, and will consist of three written works in addition to an accompanying binding text, exegesis.

Link to article The Concept of Place in Displacement Management published in Nordic Journal of Architectural Research, May 2022: Full Text: PDF

Supervisors: Lisbet Harboe and Peter Hemmersam
The Institute of Urbanism and Landscape.

PhD Started in 2019