Senior Lecturer

19 Rhetoric House
Tel: 353 1 708 4550
Email: karen.till@nuim.ie
Departmental Library Liason and Fall Speaker Series Coordinator

Director: Space&Place Research Collaborative

Member of the Terrorscapes Research Team honored with the 2013 the Euromediterranen International Award, for demonstrating the "moral value [of] cultural and social research, aimed at showing critically, through the contributions of scholars from different fields, how the image of Europe, as a transnational and integrated space, is based not only on criteria of political and economic sharing, but also on a common "topography of Memory", which has its roots in a series of collective historical traumas."

Office Hours, Summer 2013, by appointment

Research Interests:

My current work falls into three interrelated areas: memory politics; urban design and planning; and art, placemaking and public engagement. My work rests at the interface of urban, cultural and political geography, and of qualitative and empowerment research practice. I use innovative and rigorous ethnographic, participatory and collaborative research methods, often working closely with neighborhood and community leaders, city officials, and artists and practitioners (planners, architects, landscape architects and curators). This approach is also reflected in my studio, creative and public knowledge transfer practices.

Education and Professional Experience:

• 1982-1986, B.A. (First Class Honors), UCLA, Dept. of Geography. Magna Cum Laude Honors; Phi Beta Kappa National Honor Society; Award for Academic Excellence
• 1985-1986, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia, Environmental Geography and Art History; University of California Education Abroad Fellowship
• 1988-1991, M.A. UCLA, Dept. of Geography. Research Thesis: 'Expert Conceptions of Place and Community: The Planner's Vision of Rancho Santa Margarita'. Supervisor: Professor Michael Curry.
• 1990-1996, Ph.D., University of Wisconsin-Madison, Department of Geography. Dissertation: 'Place and the Politics of Memory: A Geo-ethnography of Museums and Memorials in Berlin'. Supervisor: Professor Yi-Fu Tuan. Recipient of the AAG Warren J. Nystrom Award (1998)
• 1996 - 1998, Asst. Professor, Dept. of Geography and Anthropology, Louisiana State University
• 1998-2008, Asst/Associate Professor, Dept. of Geography, University of Minnesota (tenure 2004)
• 2004-2005, Senior Lecturer, Dept. of Geography, Royal Holloway, University of London
• 2008-2010, Associate Professor (tenured), Urban Affairs & Planning, Government & International Affairs; School of Public and International Affairs, Virginia Tech
• 2010-11, Lecturer, Dept. of Geography, National University of Ireland Maynooth
• 2012-present, Senior Lecturer, Dept. of Geography, National University of Ireland Maynooth

Current Affiliate and Honorary Appointments:

• Founding Co-convener, Mapping Spectral Traces international artist-scholar-practitioner network
• Associate Member, LAND2, Univ. of Leeds, UWE-Bristol, Univ. of Dundee
• Associate Member, PLaCE Research Centre, UWE-Bristol
• International Advisory Board, Urban Laboratory, Univ. College London
• Affiliate Faculty, Graduate School of Creative Arts and Media, Dublin
• Director, Space&Place Research Collaborative, NUI Maynooth
• Member, Dublin Urban Salon
• Member, Terrorscapes Research Network (2012-2013) funded by the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Social Sciences & Humanities. Honored with the 2013 the Euromediterranen International Award.

Editorial Advisory Board Member (Scholarly International Journals):

• Political Geography
• Space and Culture
• Memory Studies
• Architecture and Culture

Selected Recent Publications:

Single-author book:

• Till, K.E. 2005 (second printing 2006). The New Berlin: Memory, Politics, Place (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press).

Edited volumes:

• Silberman, M., Till, K.E., and Ward, J. (Eds.) 2012. Walls, Borders, Boundaries: Spatial and Cultural Practices in Europe (Oxford and New York: Berghan Press).
• Till, K.E. (Ed.) 2010. Mapping Spectral Traces (Blacksburg, VA: Virginia Tech College of Architecture and Urban Affairs). (Full PDF available at: http://www.research.spia.vt.edu/events/spectral-traces/.)
• Paul Adams, Stephen Hoelscher, and Karen E. Till. Eds. 2001. Textures of Place: Rethinking Humanist Geographies, (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001).

Guest-edited special issues and sections of journals:

• Karen E. Till. Guest Ed. of Special Journal Section. 2013. ‘Interventions in the Political Geographies of Walls’ (with contributions about Belfast, Cyprus, Jerusalem, US-MX border). Political Geography, 33 (March): 52-63.pp.
• Karen Morin and Karen E. Till. Guest Editors of Special Journal Section. 2007. Review Forum: ‘Exploring Transnational Feminist Practice: Heather Merrill’s An Alliance of Women: Immigration and the Politics of Race’. Gender, Place, and Culture 14 (6) (2007): 745-763.
• Karen Falconer Al-Hindi and Karen E. Till. Guest Editors. 2001. Special issue on: ‘The New Urbanism and Neotraditional Town Planning’. Urban Geography 23 (3).

Selected peer-reviewed articles, chapters in scholarly edited volumes, and essays in artistic publications:

• Karen E. Till. 2013 (in press). ‘“Art, Memory and the City” in Bogotá: Mapa Teatro’s artistic encounters with once inhabited places’. In Making Place: Space and Embodiment in the City. Eds. Arijit Sen and Lisa Silverman. Indiana University Press, pp. forthcoming.
• Karen E. Till. 2013. ‘Walls, Resurgent Sovereignty and Infrastructures of Peace’. Political Geography 33 (March): 52-53.
• Till, K.E. 2012. 'Field Findings'. In The Red Stables Summer School Jun - Aug 2012. Dublin: Dublin City Arts Council, pp. 22-29.
• Till, K.E. 2012. 'archive | place '. In Re-Collecting. Ed. Commonage. Kilkenny: Butler Art Gallery (no pagination).
• Till, Karen E. 2012. ‘Creative Urban Emplacements: From City Sites to Place-Based Practices’. In Stefanie Bürkle, Ed. Kunst–Raum–Stadt/Art–Space–City. Berlin: Deutscher Kunstverlag, pp. 28-33.
• Till, K.E. 2012. ‘Wounded Cities: Memory-work and a Place-Based Ethics of Care' Political Geography 31 (1): 3-14; special ‘Plenary Lecture’ issue with three responses by Rob Shields, Jeff Garmany and Kevin Ward. (Journal impact factor 2.107.)
• Till, Karen E. 2012. ‘Reply: Trauma, Citizenship and Ethnographic Responsibility’. Political Geography 31 (1): 22-23
• Till, Karen E. 2011. ‘“A footstep amidst the ruins”’. In Matthew Gandy. Ed. Urban Constellations (Berlin: Jovis Verlag), pp. 167-171.
• Till, K.E. 2011. ‘Interim Use at a Former Death Strip? Art, Politics and Urbanism at Skulpturenpark Berlin_Zentrum' in Marc Silberman (Ed.) After the Wall: Berlin in Germany and Europe (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan), pp. 99-122.
• Till, K.E. 2011. ‘Resilient Politics and Memory-Work in Wounded Cities: Rethinking the City through the District Six in Cape Town, South Africa' in Bruce E. Goldstein (Ed.) Collaborative Resilience: Moving from crisis to opportunity (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press), pp. 283-307.
• Till, K.E. 2010, ‘Greening' the City? Artistic Re-Visions of Sustainability in Bogotá,' e-misferica 7 (1), issue on ‘Unstable Visualities'.
• Jonker, J. and Till, K.E. 2009 ‘Mapping and Excavating Spectral Traces in post-apartheid Cape Town' Memory Studies 2 (3): 1-31.
• Till, K.E. 2008 ‘Artistic and Activist Memory-Work: Approaching Place-Based Practice' Memory Studies 1 (1): 95-109.