Night Scenes took place online between 30 April and 15 May 2020 and examined how night spaces have been imagined, produced, experienced and narrated in European cities by communities who have mobilized around particular migrant identities or histories. These events were part of the NITE three-year transdisciplinary European research project – exploring nocturnal public spaces in eight European cities (Aarhus, Amsterdam, Berlin, Cork, Galway, Lisbon, London, Rotterdam). The project, and events, set out to explore night-time urban settings in their complexity as sites of crisis and regeneration, memory and heritage, visibility and invisibility, community solidarity and growth, and to contribute evidence from the arts and humanities to policy and wider debates on cities at night.
On 6 and 7 May 2020, two NIGHT SCENES ROUNDTABLES featured eight talks by recent masters graduates and current doctoral researchers working on a range of topics relating to the night, migration, integration and culture, in a variety of European cities.
Roundtable One
I am a 23-year-old currently living in Berlin. I was raised between London and Cairo and come from an Egyptian-German-Swedish background. I successfully completed my BA in Geography from King’s College London, specialising in Urban and Cultural Geography in January 2018. As part of my undergraduate studies, I carried out this research in my hometown analysing the multitude of factors behind the decline of London’s LGBTQ+ spaces. As a young queer person, who has frequented many of these unique nightlife spaces in the hope of seeking a sense of belonging, the closures were close to my heart, and motivated me to critically place into question: why are these important spaces closing in a queer metropolis like London? With the hope of finding some answers to these questions, I dedicated myself to numerous months of investigation, dialogue, and writing. I proudly present this research paper as a contribution to a proliferating body of literature which suggests that gay neighbourhoods in the Global North are rapidly changing and declining.
Pol Esteve Castelló is an architect (ETSA Barcelona, 2009), researcher and teacher. He holds an MA in History and Critical Thinking from the AA (2013) and he is currently a PhD candidate in The Bartlett (UCL). He is a Studio Master in the AA (since 2014) and co-directs the AAVS Brussels. In the past, he has been a teaching assistant in History and Theory in the AA (2013-2017) and a visiting lecturer in the RCA and CSM (UAL). He co-founded the studio GOIG. His work has been published and exhibited by AA, Abitare, ArkDes, Arch+, CCCB, Migrant Journal and Vitra Design Museum.
Amalia Calderón is a poet and a ReMA student for Artistic Research at the University of Amsterdam. With prior education in law and sociology, she obtained a MSc Sociology at the UvA. She has co-designed the UvA bachelor course “Posthumans In the Anthropocene”, and is a recipient of a Netherlands Research School for Literary Studies fund to organize the Spring 2021 conference “Posthuman Futures: Art & Fiction”. Her research interests include spatial justice, radical storytelling and alternative rights. She has published work on biopolitics and the body, and written three poetry collections.
Seger Kersbergen is a PhD candidate at the Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society within the Leiden NITE project. He graduated from Leiden University in 2018 with a Research masters in Latin American Studies, focusing on Brazilian literature and cinema. His research covers themes such as identity, masculinity, gender and landscape. Drawing on his previous work on spatial practice and landscape, his research within the context of NITE will focus on the Cape-Verdean community in Rotterdam and the connection of this migrant community with different public spaces in the city.
Roundtable Two
Jordan Rowe is a writer, curator and researcher on urban culture, heritage and identities. He is the Centre Manager of the UCL Urban Laboratory and Project Coordinator for the European Research Council grant ‘Making Africa Urban’.
Mia Rafalowicz-Campbell is a writer and researcher interested in urban living, moving and eating. She is a Consultant Researcher at public sector consultancy Campbell Tickell where she focuses on housing and homelessness, and is the founder of London-based cookbook club Moveable Feasts.
Adam Walls studied architecture at Cambridge University and worked in practice in London before returning to pursue a PhD in Architectural History and Theory at The Bartlett School of Architecture. Adam’s thesis project, Twilight Spaces, investigates the transformation of London’s luminary atmospheres during the period of light’s electrification. His work has previously been published in the Architectural Theory Review and he currently tutors at the UCL Writing Lab. He is also an organising member of the Bartlett Decolonial Reading Group.
I am currently a first-year PhD student in the Department of Culture, Media and Creative Industries at King’s College London. My research focuses on an interesting night-time destination – night markets. The topic ‘How do night markets as a temporary use of space restructure urban nightlife socially and culturally?’ brings cases from the global east to compare with that of the western urban night. This study look specifically at night-time spaces and night cultures, taking night markets in London and Shanghai as examples. This also links to the temporary use of space, and theories around urban regeneration and public space.
Since May 2019 I have been a PhD Student at Leuphana University Lüneburg, Germany. My study is part of the NITE project “Migrant bike couriers in the »Smart City« at night. I am an Associate Member of the Berlin Institute for Integration and Migration Research (BIM) and part of the Study Group “Work, Digitisation and Racism in the Migration Society” at BIM. Furthermore, I am an academic assistant at the Center for Digital Cultures and the Institute of Sociology Lüneburg. I have presented work on issues regarding migrant and illegalized work, sexwork and oral history of the German “Gastarbeiter” generation.
Recordings from Night Scenes Roundtables are shared according to an attribution, non-commercial and no-derivatives Creative Commons license.
