current research

Taking an archival approach, this thesis sets out to research the contested urban, social and economic transformation of New York City and London in the 1970s. Drawing specifically from a rich legacy of social movement materials, it aims to (re)assemble and make visible the theorizing, everyday practices and sites of a feminist spatial politics in and across both cities during this period.

​

At a converging moment of a radical social movement milieu and encroaching neoliberal austerity (and resistance) in both cities, issues of identity, autonomy and social reproduction were being radically contested and redefined. Inspired by grassroots feminist activism – such as the campaign for Wages for Housework and welfare rights protests as well as housing occupations, experiments with shared (and squatted) space and new types of community and care infrastructures – this project will explore how activists confronted and politicized the economic, political and social marginalization of the “domestic domain” to open up new terrains and infrastructural forms of oppositional politics in this context.

​

With half a century now passed and at a renewed time of reflection of this period, this project aims to spotlight the everyday “lived” activism, spatial strategies and political imagination of the feminist movement of the 1970s. In a contested moment and terrain of urban social reproduction, these efforts embodied, politicized and transformed social and spatial relationships in and across both New York City and London. In both looking back from today’s vantage point and, conversely, bringing this too often overlooked activist history, theorizing and everyday experiences to the forefront, I believe there can be a rich exchange of legacies, insights and viewpoints that bring both relationally into better focus.