Steering Group members
Professor Alison Blunt
Alison Blunt is Professor of Geography at Queen Mary, University of London. Her research interests span feminist, cultural and postcolonial geographies, with a particular focus on women, home, empire and diaspora. Recent books include 'Home' (with Robyn Dowling, Routledge, 2006) and 'Domicile and diaspora: Anglo-Indian women and the spatial politics of home' (Blackwell, 2005).
Her current research includes a project funded by The Leverhulme Trust on 'Diaspora cities: imagining Calcutta in London, Toronto and Jerusalem,' and new projects on the settlement movement and on co-housing for older women.
Alison can be contacted at A.Blunt@qmul.ac.uk.
Wendy Davis
Wendy has been Director of Women’s Design Service since October 2002. WDS’s mission is “to work to ensure that the design and use of the built environment reflects the needs and aspirations of women”. During her time in post Wendy has managed projects around disability and regeneration, women’s safety in public spaces, women’s engagement in the regeneration agenda, cycling for women, and women and planning.
Wendy was trained as an architect and has worked for a variety of statutory, voluntary and private organisations including London Borough of Newham and Solon Housing Association. Most recently before joining Women’s Design Service Wendy was the Development Manager for London Borough of Waltham Forest’s Building Consultancy and before that Wendy worked as one of the first Access Officers in the country and set up one of the earliest Access Groups.
Wendy has always been active in a voluntary capacity and has been a Management Committee member of many organisations. The past decade’s involvement includes Canopy Housing Association, Accommodation for Voluntary and Community Organisations, New Ways to Work and Women in Public Life. Wendy was also a school governor for 10 years.
Wendy can be contacted at wdavis@wds.org.uk.
Amanda Claremont
More info to follow shortly...
Clare Melhuish
Clare Melhuish is Visiting Research Fellow in Anthropology at Brunel University, specialising in the study of the modern built environment as social setting, and an architecture critic and writer. She ran the newly-founded cross-disciplinary journal Home Cultures (Berg) from 2004 to 2008, and has a wide range of publications to her name. In 2007-08 she was academic researcher for the Gendersite online database on gender and the built environment created by QMUL (Dept Geography) and Women's Design Service.
Clare can be contacted at c.melhuish@blueyonder.co.uk
HaeRan Shin
HaeRan Shin is a member of faculty in the Bartlett School of Planning of University College London. Her academic areas include immigrant studies, urban politics, and planning theory. For immigrant studies, she focuses on how Korean immigrant women develop their daily culture as adaptive preferences in order to respond to gender constraints. She recently looks at how undocumented Chinese Korean immigrants interact and negotiate with their ethnic community in the destination societies, London and Seoul.
HaeRan can be contacted at h.shin@ucl.ac.uk
Jayani Bonnerjee
Jayani is the LWPF administrator and can be contacted at j.bonnerjee@qmul.ac.uk.