Karol Kurnicki (WIRL-COFUND Fellow)

I am a WIRL-COFUND Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Study. My research project is based at CIM and is within the scope of Sustainable Cities GRP. I investigate social practices of car parking in the context of mobility and infrastructure studies. I am interested in the role of materiality in everyday mobility and processes of dealing with complicated socio-material challenges on the urban level. In this context car parking is seen as an interdisciplinary object of study that connects various strands of socio-spatial theory and methodology, including digital and mobile methods. The research intends to have import on the theory of social practices, understanding of im/mobile objects in cities and challenges of urban complexity.

Research profile

Urban studies, studies on materiality, mobility, infrastructure studies, critical sociology, architecture, urban design, social theory

Academic background

My fellowship at CIM takes place between 2018 and 2020. Prior to that I have worked as a post-doctoral researcher in the Institute of Sociology, Jagiellonian University, where in 2015 I have completed my PhD on ideologies in urban space. The previous project I was involved in investigated socio-spatial processes of differentiation and boundary making in large housing estates. I was a visiting researcher at the Centre for Urban Conflicts Research, University of Cambridge (2014) and Culture, Theory, Space Research Cluster, University of Plymouth. Apart from strictly academic activities I enjoy taking part in architectural design projects and occasionally write about urban space and architecture to non-academic journals.

Selected publications

Kurnicki K. 2018. Defending Modernist Architecture in Poland: Spaces of State, Emotions and Democracy. In: T. Großmann, P. Nielsen (eds.) Architecture, Democracy and Emotions. The Politics of Feeling Since 1945. London: Routledge

Kurnicki K. 2018. Ideologie w mieście. O społecznej produkcji przestrzeni [Ideologies in a City. On the Social Production of Space]. Kraków: Nomos

Kurnicki K. 2017. Mechanisms of Loss. In: K. Nawratek (ed.) Re-industrialization and Progressive Urbanism. New York: Punctum Books

Kurnicki K., Sternberg M. 2016. Arrested conflict: transnational place-making in Polish-German border towns. Space and Polity 20 (3). DOI: 10.1080/13562576.2016.1225860

Kurnicki K. 2014. Towards a Spatial Critique of Ideology: Architecture as a Test. Journal of Architecture and Urbanism 38(1). DOI:10.3846/20297955.2014.893642

Contact

Institute of Advanced Study

Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies

University of Warwick

Coventry

CV4 7AL

Email: Karol dot Kurnicki at warwick dot ac dot uk