Research Group > Mobility, Space, Place and Urban Studies (MOSPUS) > Event

MOSPUS seminar: The Messy Archives of Welfare Repair

Heidi Svenningsen Kajita (Copenhagen University) will present on 'The Messy Archives of Welfare Repair’’. Building on her long experience of working with residents’ critical engagement with urban planning and design in welfare-state housing areas, her talk explores the value of imaginary, open-ended and situated arts practice in new living futures.
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  • Mobility, Space, Place and Urban Studies (MOSPUS) (Research Group)
    • Thursday
    21
    May
    Start:12:15
    End:13:15
    Place: Building 02, room 02.1-123, Roskilde University, Universitetsvej 1, Roskilde Universitet

    Kajita will talk about the Horizon Europe project INNATURE (2025-29) where she leads the Danish team in Lundtoftegade, Copenhagen, and will develop mechanisms for a ‘messy’ living archive. The project’s five European Eco-Social Living Labs are co-created and co-led by a collective of interdisciplinary researchers, ecologists, artists and designers, community and volunteering organisations, SMEs and cities. Heidi leads on Arts Conversations that across all the local Eco-Social Living Labs will demonstrate the value of imaginary, open-ended and situated arts practices in new living futures. For more info see: https://www.innaturecollective.com/ 

    This approach builds on more than 20 years of experience working with residents’ critical engagement within urban planning and design practice and research in welfare state large-scale housing areas in Denmark, Sweden and the UK. She activates archives to build a diversity of knowledge and to reveal often hidden voices and concerns in welfare repair. In meeting us at RUC, she hopes to discuss this research path where she as a caring amateur deliberately tangles topics such as architectural design processes, coercive urban policy documents, minor matters in archives, gossip and complaint.

    Heidi Svenningsen Kajita is Associate Professor at University of Copenhagen. With a background in the architectural humanities, Heidi works for socio-ecological change in everyday spaces. Focusing on memory work in welfare state housing areas, her research deals with users’ everyday practices, normative frameworks for the built environment, and architectural paperwork. Through creative-practice research, she reveals techniques for combining social and technical expertise for resilience. She activates archives, documents, oral histories or other memory material that record often uncomfortable histories of landscapes, buildings and structures associated with marginalisation and ecological exploitation. The challenge of dealing with pasts, presents and futures of socio-ecological transformation is complex, and she therefore links architectural history, creative practice, and ethnographic strategies to situate perspectives and needs of different actors and resources.

    Registration:
    All welcome, no registration required. For more information, or for an online link if you can only attend virtually, please write to dpinder@ruc.dk 

    The seminar is organised by MOSPUS, a research group in the Department of People and Technology that focuses on Mobility, Space, Place and Urban Studies.