Common Grounds: On Site

An open call for active participation in an alternative research event.

This will be an opportunity to collaborate with other early-career researchers and explore what it means to be a situated/active researcher, and what might be gained through a propositional or praxis-led research agenda. Researchers that actively engage on site with people and place are encouraged to apply from any discipline.

Site is loosely defined for this call as follows:

Site as noun:
A position, location, place, situation or locality. Somewhere demarcated or appropriated as a locus for future construction, work or study.

Site as verb:
To place, situate, set, locate, position or station. (Also to notionally inhabit?)

Further constructing the meanings and connotations of site for multidisciplinary research is an intended outcome of the event.

This event will involve the testing of site-based methodologies in real-time on a real site and so two-part proposals are sought for:

1. a way of working that actively explores the relationship between people and site (50 words max.)
2. a site to locate cross-disciplinary investigations into methodologies that critically explore the relationship between people and place.

Proposals are welcomed via email to the organisers:
c.butterworth[at]sheffield.ac.uk & adam.park[at]sheffield.ac.uk

If you have questions or would like to get involved in the wider discussion about this event, please comment here, or contact GAS via twitter @GAS_sheffield


This is the second event in the Common Grounds series, an annual colloquium for post-graduate students and early career researchers exploring methodologies for researching architecture and the built environment, with an emphasis on collaborative research incorporating innovative practice and activist methods.

‘Common Grounds’ is a self-organised and student-led initiative. It is not affiliated to a particular institution, but puts forward a non-hierarchical, collaborative way of working and placing value in research which can be appropriated by future participants and organisers.

This second colloquium, ‘Common Grounds: On Site’, is organised and hosted through GAS, the University of Sheffield Graduate Architectural Society.