Research on narratives of the European city receives COST grant

The proposal ‘Writing Urban Places. New narratives of the European city’ has been accepted as COST Action proposal. Klaske Havik (Architecture) leads the consortium, aiming to collect current initiatives of scholars addressing urban change from the crossing point of literary studies, urban studies and architecture. The goal is to offer a conceptual framework and operative tools to analyse urban narratives and to share knowledge with city makers.

The project will be kicked-off in Brussels in Spring 2019. Over the coming four years, the project will investigate three targets, both thematic and through case studies. Firstly, meaningfulness will be explored: offering local communities and professionals the ability to improve their understanding of their built environment. Secondly, appropriation will be researched: empowering communities by improving their ability to project their feelings on their built environment. Finally, the topic of integration will be taken in account: offering concrete tools and methods for the construction of common grounds among communities, based on relations of meaningfulness and appropriation of their built environment. Writing Urban Places proposes an innovative investigation and implementation of a process for developing human understanding of communities; their society; and their place, by narrative methods.

The European Cooperation in Science and Technology (COST) provides international research funding for researchers to set up their interdisciplinary research networks in Europe and beyond. These bottom-up networks run for 4 years and help to build capacity. Through these networks, the so-called COST Actions, COST provides funds for organising meetings, training schools, short term scientific missions or other networking activities in a wide range of scientific topics.