Biography
I am an Assistant Professor of Architecture and Uban Studies at Cambridge's Department of Architecture, and a Fellow of Christ’s College. My work focuses on built environments shaped in extreme conditions, with a particular emphasis on spaces of displacement, conflict, spatial injustice, and environmental changes, primarily in colonial settings.
My research covers historic and contemporary contexts, looking at camps (setttler/refugee/detention/protest camps) and urban contexts as ever-changing spatial constellations through which political negotiations and cultural transformations are staged and reworked. It has won numerous academic awards including the John Urry Article Prize, the Mellon/SAH Author Award and the RIBA President’s Award for Research.
My monograph, The Common Camp: Architecture of Power and Resistance in Israel-Palestine (University of Minnesota Press, 2022), focuses on Israel-Palestine as an extensive laboratory of camps and examines how camps, whether employed by colonial, national and global powers as instruments of control or constructed ad hoc as makeshift spaces of resistance and refuge, are used as versatile mechanisms by which modern societies and territories are administered, negotiated and reorganised. In my co-edited volume Camps Revisited (Rowman & Littlefield’s series Geopolitical Bodies, Material Worlds, 2018), examines the multifaceted spatial forms and meanings of the camp are examined in multiple geopolitical contexts. I am also the cofounder of UNFOLD, Cambridge's decolonising architecture group.
I hold a PhD in Architecture from the University of Cambridge, MA (Magna Cum Laude) in Hermeneutics and Cultural Studies and a B.Arch (Cum Laude) in Architecture from Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, Jerusalem. My career as a practicing architect in Tel Aviv and in London includes work on large scale housing projects such as Peabody Avenue social housing in Pimlico, London (for Haworth Tompkins) and the design of the winning entry for the English Partnerships bid for the housing scheme of the Victorian Stonehouse Hospital in Dartford, Kent (for HTA Architects).
Besides academia, I have published three poetry collections (Hakibbutz Hameuchad, in Hebrew) and enjoy long distance running.
Research
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- Spaces of displacement, migration and refuge, including spaces of climate mobilities
- Ephemeral architecture and temporary human environments
- Spaces of exclusion and inequality
- Camps (refugee camps, migrant camps, resettlement camps, protest camps, detention camps)
- Transnational and urban borderscapes
- Emergency shelters and diaspora homes
- Spaces of conflict and violence, espetially in settler colonial settings
- Prticipatory architecture and urban design in spaces of radical transformations
- Critical theories, including urban critical theories, feminist theories, post/decolonial theories and political philosophy
I would be interested in supervising PhD students in any of the topics listed above.
Publications
The Common Camp: Architecture of Power and Resistance in Israel-Palestine (University of Minnesota Press, 2022).
Camps Revisited: Multifaceted Spatialities of a Modern Political Technology , co-edited with Claudio Minca & Diana Martin in Rowman & Littlefield's book series ‘Geopolitical Bodies, Material Worlds’.
Irit's articles have appeared in a wide range of journals, including: Antipode, Mobilities, Progress in Human Geography, City, Political Geography, The Journal of Architecture, and Public Culture.
For a full list of publications (including on-line papers), visit: https://cambridge.academia.edu/IritKatz
Teaching and Supervisions
Year 1: Islamic Architecture as part of the course History & Theory pre-1800
Year 2: Acting through Architecture: Spatial Activism in the Built Environment
Year 3: Thresholds and Borderlines: Space and Power on the Edge of Architecture
MA: Lectures and seminars as part of the course Introduction to Socio-Politics and Culture of Architecture and the City
Other Professional Activities
Co-founder of UNFOLD: Towards inclusive, just, and plural environments