Janetka Platun is an installation artist. The street is often her studio. The themes that run through her art are our collective search for belonging, transient concepts of home and how we deal with loss. Globe provides new perspectives and approaches to themes, which are central to her work.
Alison Blunt is Professor of Geography and Head of the School of Geography at Queen Mary, University of London. She is also co-director of the Centre for Studies of Home, a partnership between QMUL and The Geffrye Museum of the Home. Her research on home, migration and diaspora has been funded by the AHRC, ESRC and Leverhulme Trust, and includes work on the spatial politics of home, homeland and diaspora, diaspora cities and new forms of urban dwelling. Her work with Janetka Platun on ‘Globe’ connects closely to her current research with Olivia Sheringham on ‘Home, city and migration: urban dwelling and mobility in East London.’ Her books include Domicile and diaspora: Anglo-Indian women and the spatial politics of home (Blackwell, 2005) and, with Robyn Dowling, Home (2006).
Olivia Sheringham is a social and cultural geographer with a broad interest in relationships between identity, space and power in the context of transnational migration and diaspora. Her involvement in Globe emerges from her current research project (led by Alison Blunt) on home and migration in East London, as well as a growing interest in the possibilities of collaboration between geographers and artists for both theory and practice.
Caoimhe McAvinchey is Reader in Drama, Theatre and Performance Studies and Head of the School of Drama at QMUL. Her research is in the cultural politics of socially engaged arts practice. She is particularly interested in how artists’ engagement in and with communities, challenges and innovates contemporary performance making practices.