Juliet Davis

I am a Reader in Architecture and Urbanism at the Welsh School of Architecture, Cardiff University. I graduated from Cambridge University with a first-class BA degree and the top portfolio prize in Architecture in 1995 and with a Commendation for the Diploma in Architecture in 1999. While in practice, I worked for Eric Parry Architects from 1999-2005 where I was project architect for the Wimbledon School of Art new studio building and on the regeneration of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. I embarked on an AHRC-funded PhD based at the LSE Cities Programme in 2007 under Professor Francine Tonkiss, which I completed in 2011. My research focussed on the processes of planning and designing the promised regeneration legacy of the 2012 London Olympics in the run-up to the Games, looking at how the notion of regeneration was constructed as an urban future in these contexts and some of the early impacts of planning and development (in particular,  tabula rasa and displacement).
I was an LSE Fellow co-leading the design studio of the ‘MSc in City Design and Social Science’ between 2008 and 2011 and a member of Professor Richard Sennett’s ‘Nylon Research Network’. I took up a Senior Lectureship at Cardiff University in 2012 and was promoted to Reader in 2017. I have continued to follow the story of Olympic legacy planning in East London, focussing on understanding the evolution of plans and approaches to regeneration planning, and endeavouring to evaluate the processes and emerging outcomes of development in terms of the promises made to local people at the time of the Olympic Bid (inclusion, resources,  amenities, housing and the like), and the role of design in these outcomes (such as through placemaking and place-marketing). I am broadly interested in the topics of urban change, regeneration, post-industrial transformation, urban improvement and the making of urban futures - both in how these processes often don't and yet potentially could better benefit the local communities which are their focus.
I am currently working on a new book project called ‘Care and the City: ethics of urbanism’ which sets out to consider a range of aspects of city-making in terms of concepts of care (and/ or the lack thereof). These include design, participatory practice, fabric maintenance and financing.
I teach design and planning history on the Masters in Urban Design and I am Director of Postgraduate Taught Programmes.