Professor Kim Dovey
Affiliation: University of Melbourne
Discipline: Built Environment & Design
Year elected: 2022
How would you describe your work at a dinner party?
I study cities at multiple scales from the sidewalk to the metropolis, but mostly I am interested in urbanity – the intensive, creative and productive buzz of urban life, which is the reason cities exist. With a background in architecture, urban design and planning, I have been keen to understand how the shape of buildings and towns impacts on the ways we learn to live in close proximity with strangers.
What initially drew you to your field of study?
In architecture school I was irked by exclusively formalistic critiques of buildings as objects; perhaps in reaction I became interested in philosophy and the phenomenology of ‘place’ and ‘home’. Of course these concepts are contested, and this led in turn to questions about the relations of place to power at multiple scales.
What should your field of study be doing more of right now?
I would like to see more relational thinking, network thinking, assemblage thinking. There are no ‘things-in-themselves’, rather identities and things are produced by interrelations. This means rethinking the boundaries between the sciences and humanities, and between the human and non-human world.
A recent moment of inspiration or motivation?
I have studied informal urbanism in cities of the global South where the informal is normal. Yet the word ‘informal’ is literally defined in terms of what it is not - not-formal. I realized that the informal is not a lack of formality, rather it is the un-named ground upon which formal codes and structures are built, for better or worse.
What are you most proud of?
I think researchers create concepts as tools for thinking with. When I see a concept that I have helped to develop (such as the ‘urban DMA’) picked up and used effectively by other researchers, in another context, that seems like success. When I see former PhD students creating new concepts I feel the same.
What hobbies or interests keep you busy outside of work?
Playing music is a most challenging form of relational thinking – if something is worth doing, it’s worth doing badly. I am a bit of a Dylan/Cohen tragic.