International Women in Engineering Day exists to celebrate women who contribute so much to the profession, but who currently make up only 9% of the UK workforce.

The aim of the day is to explore the ways in which women are excluded from the profession and to continue to develop and lobby for increasing action to create a more inclusive industry. In light of this mission, people will be organising events around the world this week to discuss important issues such as the gender pay gap, the ever-present need for female role models and outreach activities, the contentious matter of quotas and the practical actions employers can take to ensure women are able to stay in work after they have started a family.

At the City Leadership Lab, however, we decided to do something slightly different. We wanted to focus on how the cities we live in – built in large part by engineers – are themselves gendered. We wanted to uncover the material results of a male over-representation in design and particularly how it is shaping our everyday lives, and we wanted to reveal the hidden histories of women’s activism in the city.

(more…)

STEaPP intern Luke Gregory Jones reflects on 6 months working on the Choreographing the City research project

In my time with UCL STEaPP I have been fortunate to observe, produce and reflect upon some hugely exciting research. The project I have been a part of, Choreographing the City, brings forward the productive possibilities of collaborative action between choreographic thinking and doing, and engineering. It is clear, the problems facing our contemporary cities require a diverse and trans-disciplinary approach. Expertise need to be challenged and shared across distant and seemingly unconnected fields. Choreographing the city, taking this transdisciplinarity as its starting point, brought together choreographers and engineers to discuss how they might work together to choreograph a city more sympathetic to the unique movements and diverse nee shapes of its citizenry.

My role in the project can be broadly split into two aspects. The first has been to consider, study and analyse the primary research produced by Dr Ellie Cosgrave and Dr John Bingham-Hall as part of the previous research workshops. These 5 workshops, which took place in the Autumn of 2017, each invited a choreographer and an engineer to, firstly, explore and analyse a particular area of central London (including Kings Cross, Euston and Great Portland Street), and then secondly to be interviewed jointly to reflect on the parallel theories and practices of choreography and engineering.

(more…)