Civic Spaces and Desire

About

Charles Drozynski is a lecturer working in the University of West England and a Part II architect. In his academic career he has taught and lectured in a number of universities across the UK. His PhD thesis written in Cardiff University focussed on the intersections of architecture and post-linguistic schools of thought in particular those put forward by Michel Foucault as well as Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. His research interests include the entanglements of the subvert in society and architecture as well as the development of new technologies that arise from unconventional ideas. He is presently pursuing a number of projects including a book publication on the concept of Generosity in Architecture with his contribution of a Deleuzean reading of the architecture for the parkour subculture (project initiated in Cardiff University) and a chapter on the production and reproduction of nostalgia for a publication on the production of attachment and meaning to places (project initiated in the University of Nevada Las Vegas USA).Diana Beljaars is a lecturer in Human Geography with an enhanced research pathway in the Geography department of Swansea University. She joined the department to teach political and urban geography after finishing her doctoral research entitled Geographies of Compulsive Interactions; Bodies Objects Spaces at the School of Geography and Planning Cardiff University. Her work comprehends the development of an understanding of compulsivity as a more-than-medical concept that has socio-political potential connoting interactions between the human and the more-than-human. Her work brings together human geography medical humanities continental philosophy and the medical and clinical study of mental health diagnoses and it is based most notably on the poststructural post-phenomenological and post human theories of Deleuze Guattari and Lingis. As such it draws on and contributes to geographies that seek to go beyond rationality intentionality and meaning in order to capture the unfolding of life. Her work also directly contributes to an increased understanding of life with human conditions such as Tourette syndrome OCD ADHD schizophrenia anxiety and personality disorders depression and suicidal tendencies.