Ask an academic: UCL Summer School

Hayley Gewer (UCL Centre for Languages & International Education) runs a UCL Summer School module called ‘Global London: Contemporary Urbanism, Culture and Space’.

The course enables students from around the world to take a global city (London) as a pivotal concept from which to explore a range of considerations around contemporary cities, including their own.

Could you tell us more about the course?
The course was set up specifically for the summer school. It is a short three-week course that really invites students to look at urban complexities, urban contradictions and urban opportunities within a very short period. Students are invited to come and learn about London, to explore theoretical concepts and to practically engage with what the city has to offer in terms of contemporary urban processes.

We look at considerations around multi-ethnicities, transnationalism, inclusion and exclusion to understand how migration has shaped the city of London and how it represents the global world through one city. We look at considerations around urban culture, cultural production and urban change – looking at processes like gentrification, vernacular culture, ordinary culture and manufactured culture – to understand how London is currently a city of cultural diversity but also a city of cultural homogeneity.

How do students interact with the city?
The course really hopes to provide students with an opportunity to explore how cities have been shaped, who is involved in shaping them, who benefits from shaping them, and who doesn’t, and to take a critical lens to not only London but their own cities and cities all around the world.

Students are also given the opportunity to share with each other in the classroom; this is complemented by fieldwork where students are encouraged to use a range of research methods to explore the urban. It is quite experimental – they are encouraged to use sound and film as a way of engaging with specific places that we visit. They are also urged to really explore how the theoretical approaches that we do in the class room apply or don’t apply to the areas that we are visiting.

How does the course cultivate a global perspective?
The course uses ‘Global London’ as a pivotal concept to explore a range of urban considerations. We take the concept of global cities as a starting point where we explore the process of globalisation and the ‘world cities/global cities’ concept that has emerged from that.

Students are invited to critique the concepts and to think about the broader implications of these hypotheses. We then counteract the global cities hypothesis with more post-colonial considerations of cities around the world and all the time students are encouraged to reflect on their own cities, to share information and to learn from each other.

Students come from all over the world to study on the summer school and this course really invites them not only to experience, learn and think about London, but then also to go back to their own cities and hopefully to relook at their cities with new eyes, given what they’ve experienced on the course.

How has this been for you, participating in the summer school?
It has been a very enriching experience, because it is really invaluable to hear from a wide range of experiences, to learn from students themselves about their own unique urban spaces but also for them to share. Students are young so they are bringing in a lot of new information I might not have been exposed to and they are also able to create linkages between information I might not have been able to make. It’s a very rewarding experience.

I think for UCL as a whole it is great to have students from all the world, even for a short period of time, because students are able to see how well-located UCL is, the facilities that at here, the professionalism of the teaching and the environment that students learn in.

Even though some students might only be here for a short time, it might be that students return to do post graduate studies in the future.

• University of Melbourne undergraduate Florence Townshend was a participant on this year’s course – read her blog about her experiences.
• To find out more about the Global London module, contact Hayley.
• Interested in running a module at the UCL Summer School? Contact the team here.