Advisors, reviewers and DUS team

Advisors and reviewers

  • Annmarie Adams, McGill University, Canada
  • Verity Clarkson, University of Brighton, UK
  • Centre for Design History, University of Brighton
  • Luis Diaz, University of Brighton, UK
  • Dana Hamdan, University of Brighton, UK
  • James Kerestes, Ball State University, U.S.
  • Zakkiya Khan, University of Brighton, UK
  • Virginia Lee, RMIT University and University of Adelaide, Australia
  • Elisa Lega, University of Brighton, UK
  • Hannah Lewi, University of Melbourne, Australia
  • Peter Marsh, University of Brighton, UK
  • ChristineMcCarthyVictoria University of Wellington, NZ
  • Pragya Sharma, University of Brighton, UK
  • Rafaela Siagkri, University of Brighton, UK
  • Tanya Southcott, University of Brighton, UK
  • Ben Sweeting, University of Brighton, UK
  • Kai-Uwe Werbeck, The University of North Carolina at Charlotte, U.S.
  • Claire Wintle, University of Brighton, UK

Conference convenors

Georgina Downey

Georgina Downey is a visiting research fellow in art history at the University of Adelaide. She has published widely on the domestic interior and her books include Domestic Interiors: Representing Home from the Victorians to the Moderns (Bloomsbury, 2013), Designing the French Interior: The Modern Home and Mass Media edited with Anca Lasc and Mark Taylor (Bloomsbury, 2015), and Domesticity under Siege: Threatened Spaces of the Modern Home (Bloomsbury, 2022) with Mark Taylor and Terry Meade. Recent publications include a chapter on mid-century modern architecture for The Adelaide Art Scene: Becoming Contemporary 1939-2000 (Wakefield Press, 2023).

Terry Meade

Terry Meade is Principal Lecturer at the University of Brighton in the School of Architecture Technology and Engineering. His background in architecture, fine art and engineering contribute to his research interests. Current research explores narratives that unfold in specific places, and how they may be used to negotiate specific spatial environ­ments. Narrative is considered to be an inherited capability forming individual and communal histories particular to the experience of a place. Work carried out in Israel/Palestine, building houses with an Israeli peace group, has enabled issues of security (walls, barriers and borders) to inform this research through the contribu­tion to particular narratives about domestic space.

Judit Pusztaszeri

Judit Pusztaszeri is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Brighton in the School of Architecture Technology and Engineering. As a spatial designer and researcher her interest lays in normative social and spatial practices and how they permeate design and teaching practice. Judit’s work has explored this theme in several domains, including architectural sites of memory, ranging from national to domestic and everyday environments. Her current focus investigates how Hoarding Disorder, the only psychological disorder which manifests itself spatially gaining meaning and relying on the surrogate environment of the home, has an inherent conflict with the idea of home as a haven. Her research sits between Medical-Humanities and Critical Spatial Practice, contributing to both fields.

Original book contributors

Annmarie Adams, FRAIC, is jointly appointed in McGill University’s Guo-hua Fu School of Architecture and the Department of Social Studies of Medicine, where she serves as department chair. A native of London, Ontario, Adams graduated with Honours from McGill University in 1981. She then attended the University of California at Berkeley, where she received her professional Masters of Architecture in 1986 and PhD in 1992. She has taught at McGill University since 1990, serving as Director of the Institute for Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies and subse­quently as Director of the School of Architecture. Adams’ research focuses on the relationship of medicine and architecture. She is the author of three monographs: Architecture in the Family Way: Doctors, Houses, and Women, 1870–1900 (McGill- Queens University Press, 1996), Medicine by Design: The Architect and the Modern Hospital, 1893–1943 (University of Minnesota Press, 2008) and co-author of Designing Women: Gender and the Architectural Profession (University of Toronto Press, 2000), with sociologist Peta Tancred.

James F. Kerestes is Assistant Professor of Architecture at Ball State University and the founder of blok+WERK studio, an interdisciplinary research lab in the field of architecture and design. He holds a Bachelor of Architecture degree from Syracuse University and a Master of Science in Architecture degree from Pratt Institute. He has taught digital media and emergent technologies at Pratt Institute, Princeton University and the University of Pennsylvania.

Hannah Lewi is Professor in Architecture in the Melbourne School of Design at the University of Melbourne and Co-director of the research hub ACAHUCH. Her research interests span modern architecture history, new media and digital representation of history and heritage, and theoretical inquiries of heritage and conservation. She is the vice-chair of DOCOMOMO Australia, was a past presi­dent of SAHANZ and co-editor of Fabrications, and is currently an investigator on an ARC project on Building the Modern Australian Campus. Recent co-authored publications include Australia Modern: Architecture, Landscape and Design, Thames & Hudson, 2019, and forthcoming The Routledge International Handbook of New Digital Practices in Galleries, Libraries, Archives, Museums and Heritage, co-eds. Lewi, Smith, Cooke, Vom Leon, 2019.

Judit Pusztaszeri is a lecturer and early career researcher at the University of Brighton. Her previous research was interested in power in architecture, analysing architectural sites of memory in post-communist countries forming national and individual identities. Her mode of case study analysis was to challenge the conventional narratives associated with the histories of the chosen sites, arguing that urban design actively constitutes political reality. Her current research looks at domestic sites of memory and identity, the home understood through the eyes of the hoarder.  The home has a significant social and spatial determining factor in our identity in our adult life. Through a spatial study of hoarding, Judit again is interested in the politics of our personal memory in the construction of our identity.

Kai-Uwe Werbeck is Assistant Professor of German at University of North Carolina at Charlotte, with a PhD in German Literature from UNC Chapel Hill, and serves as President of the Philological Association of the Carolinas. His research interests include German post-war film and literature, global horror cinema and media stud­ies. He has published on the multi-media aesthetics and hidden politics in the work of Rolf Dieter Brinkmann, the transfers between rubble literature and film in the novels of Heinrich Böll, the limits of literary representation in Rainald Goetz’s Rave and German no-budget splatter in the Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts. An essay on augmented reality games appeared in an edited volume in 2016. Kai-Uwe is one of the translators of Alexander Kluge’s Kong’s Finest Hour. Critical essays on John Carpenter’s The Thing and Dennis Gansel’s Wir sind die Nacht are forthcoming. He is currently working on a monograph on (West) German horror films after 1945.

Conference team

Academic team

Zakkiya Khan

Zakkiya Khan, PhD, is Senior Lecturer at the University of Brighton. With extensive global academic experience, they are a founding member of the DRS Special Interest Group: Designing Retail and Service Futures. Their research passion lies in exploring the future of designing localised retail environments in the context of globalisation.

Elisa Lega

Elisa Lega is a Senior Lecturer in Interior Architecture and Architecture at the University of Brighton, with a PhD in Spatial Design from Politecnico di Milano. Her research spans from interior to urban design, focusing on critical methodologies for evolving urban spaces. Elisa lives in Geneva, Switzerland.

Peter Marsh

Navigating Interior Architecture as a Course lead who appreciates design as an embodied process that cannot be successfully undertaken without direct engagement with materials, places or people. His research engages in experimental practice-led and based research that draws on theories from fields such as embodied cognitive linguistics, sign language and translation studies exploring how we can approach material culture as a tool of communication in design.

Rafaella Siagkri

Rafaella Siagkri is a lecturer in Interior Architecture at the University of Brighton. Rafaella’s research interests span across interdisciplinary aspects exploring firstly the relationship between architecture and cinema through the application of Virtual Reality (VR) technology, and secondly the impact of gender bias in spatial design. Before pursuing an academic career, she worked as a registered architect in Cyprus and Greece and was involved in designing several buildings and participating in architectural competitions. She has also participated in many exhibitions in Greece as well as across Europe, with the most renowned being the Biennale of Venice, the 14th International Architecture Exhibition/ Fundamentals as part of the Turkish Pavilion.

Tanya Southcott

Tanya Southcott is a Lecturer in Architecture and Design at the University of Brighton where she teaches in architecture and interior architecture. Tanya studied architecture at the University of Waterloo and McGill University in Canada and holds a certificate in heritage conservation planning from the University of Victoria.

Graphics and editorial support

Andrew Bailey

Website support

Michael Wilson is a research communications professional working across writing, graphic and AV production and digital design. His specialisms include research audience development, articulation of practice-led arts research, narrative design and digital creative development.

Technical support

Simon Vincent holds a BA in Interior Design (London Met) and a PGCE (Goldsmiths). After five years of teaching design and five years in building trades, he led BTEC construction at East Sussex College. Currently, he is the technical manager for Architecture and Design at the University of Brighton, pursuing an MRes in architectural education.

Event and organisational support

Eden Turner had a significant involvement in the organisation and coordination of the Domesticity Under Siege International Architectural Conference, leading on many components, including managing registration and attendance, liaising with conference suppliers, and organising the conference dinner. Eden has worked at the University of Brighton since June 2024 and has managed and supported many academic conferences and events. The most notable so far was the European Early Childhood Education Research Association conference in September 2024. Eden is passionate about creating dynamic and engaging experiences for attendees and looks forward to meeting everyone at the conference.

Academic administrative and organisational support

Sam Collin has been working at University of Brighton for just over two years. He works within the Research and Knowledge Exchange Department, as well as the School of Architecture, Technology and Engineering, helping to facilitate our talented colleagues’ work on a number of different research projects and events.