Who we are

I trained as an architect and practice as an artist, with an interdisciplinary, research-based practice.

My recent practice and research has explored material poetics, memory, heritage and regeneration. In my PhD, 'Détour and Retour: Practices and poetics of salt as narratives of relation and re-generation in Brixton', I developed ideas that linked material cultures of salt through a series of journeys to a 'poetics of re-generation', expanding the language of regeneration and spatialising relational practice to emphasise an ethics of regeneration practices. I'm interested in the material cultures of migration and trade and in the relevance and significance of everyday practices, rituals and engagement with material culture to how places are made and continue to be remade and maintained. My book, Salted Earth: poetics of place and migration through four artistic journeys, will be published by Intellect in May 2026. See https://www.intellectbooks.com/salted-earth

My research and practice engages with place, and the public realm. I'm interested in how artistic interventions and critical spatial practices that highlight and reveal poetics of place could contribute to more ethical and effective models of regeneration and heritage practices (including a more ethical engagement with memory traces and their relation to the new).

I’m a board member of ixia (public art sector support) and am engaged in current research and policy around public art in the UK.

I originally trained in participatory research methods and tools and I bring an in depth knowledge and experience of participation and socially engaged practice to my teaching, research and practice, across architecture, art and design.

Current and recent research projects and networks:

Acts of Transfer – research project with Dr Lizzie Lloyd, UWE.

A practice-based research project, into the documentation and legacies of socially engaged practice and critical writing about the practice. The project was originally funded by Arts Council England, and the Centre for Spatial, Environmental and Cultural Politics at UoB, and outcomes included 2 symposia at UoB, talks at Arnolfini and workshops at Towner Eastbourne and Fontys University. A book, Acts of Transfer, published by Social Art Publications is available. An exposition on Research Catalogue published by RUUKKU jorunal showcases the films and text  outputs: https://ruukku.journal.fi/issue/view/13176

In 2026 we have been awarded Impact Accerlearation Account funding (AHRC) for a next phase of work in partnerhsip with Brighton based arts organisation Quiet Down There. 

Origination - project with Rebecca Beinart

An ongoing artistic research and practice project in collaboration with my sister, artist Rebecca Beinart, which we have been working on since 2008. Beginning as an investigation into our family history and migrations, growing into a wider project about the materiality, memory, and rituals of migration and diaspora, we have used performance, sculpture, film and other media to explore lost and invisible heritages. Outputs in 2024 included a residency at Fabrica and we have a forthcoming book chapter in the edited book Nomadic Performance Making: Experiences, Environments and Empathy out in 2027. Our current phase of work engages with our Grandmother Margaret Stanton's archive at the Modern Records Centre, Coventry which contains papers related to her activism over 70 years in social justice, antiracist and anticolonial campaigns. 

A Difficult Place: Cost of Living collaborative film project

This Ignite 3.1 (AHRC impact funding) funded project has worked with people living in the East Brighton area to create a film documenting experiences of the current cost of living crisis. In partnership with Phoenix Food Shop, an affordable food project based in the Phoenix Community Centre, we identified people who are currently using their resources and then worked with these individuals to tell their stories, supported by myself and filmmaker (John Edwards). The resulting film, ‘A Difficult Place’, has been screened in Brighton and at a number of conferences. This project aims to document the experiences that people are going through on a local level and to share these stories more widely so that these stories become more visible and people are not just seen as statistics.

The Salt Art Research Network is an international network of artists and curators working with, or interested in working with salt as material and theme of artistic practice. Members are currently based in the UK and Italy and have affiliations with the University of Brighton, Teesside University, Goldsmiths and University of Turin. In 2024 the Network is collaborated with NICHE, Universita Ca’ Foscari in Venice for a workshop event and furter research acitvities are planned.

The DISTERRA network is funded by the UKRI’s Arts and Humanities Research Council. It is hosted at the University of Edinburgh and led by Nichola Khan, and Zoha Waseem (University of Warwick). It crosses knowledge boundaries by bringing together transdisciplinary academics, public audiences, artists and creative practitioners to explore ‘terrains of disappearance’ in forced migration, armed conflict, and environmental crisis across Asia-Europe. Its aim is to link typically separated regional or single-issue fields of inquiry. It brings together transdisciplinary scholarship and a creative arts focus to interrogate migrant disappearances as a generalised Asia-Europe phenomenon, but one with particularity in specific emplaced environments. It expands the priority given to border-related disappearances in migration by examining wider interactions of migration with forced displaced and disappearances as forms of absence in everyday life, including in cities.

I am a social psychologist interested in how inequalities and systemic forces shape people's body image experiences, as well as how ideas around bodies and appearance are constructed within societies. 

I completed an MSc in Applied Social Psychology and a PhD in Psychology at the University of Sussex. My doctoral thesis examined how social class contexts, beyond being indicators of access to resources, shape women’s body image in the UK.

My research interests include:

• Body image experiences amongst people from underrepresented and/or Minoritised groups (e.g., gender, ethnicity and sexual orientations) and in particular, amongst working-class women
• Antiracist approaches to body image research
• Experiences of discrimination and/or dehumanisation in relation to appearance and bodies (e.g., systemic racism, classism, etc.)
• Objectification, sexualisation and the commodification of women’s appearance and bodies

I also contribute to the following research networks as:

• Management Board member (Communications Lead) - Centre for Transforming Sexuality and Gender (CTSG), University of Brighton
• Committee Member - British Psychological Society (BPS) Psychology of Women and Equalities Section (POWES)
• ECR Rep - Inclusive Digital Societies REG, University of Brighton
• External member - Sports, Physical Activity, Health and Exercise Research (SPHERE) Group at the University of Sussex.

Through her practice-based research, Zoe has explored the rural experience and relationship to place, how this forms identity and represents belonging told through story. She is interested in landscape, the concept of wilderness and the search for a primordial connection. Her work in the American desert demonstrates a particular interest in combining a desire to experience the ‘sublime’ with the inexplicable seduction of the abyss. She explores the precarious nature of the photographic medium itself, where the truth is always interpreted, testing the narrative potential of photography in relation to its abstract capacities. Zoe is expanding her approach to sound, drawing and text, exploring how the media intertwine with her photographic practice, to express a narrative around territory and cultural identity on UK borders, building on research themes in her practice, of nationhood, landscape and connection to place. Zoe is interested in how the landscape shapes society, how “place” is constituted, deconstructed, augmented, discussed, experienced.

My research interests are broadly centred around social geographies of identity, ‘race’, nation and belonging, with particular focus on the UK. Connected to these broad interests, I am also concerned with legacies of colonialism, intersections of ‘race’ and class, migration, integration, suburban multiculture, and politics of indigeneity, genealogy and relatedness.

Dr. Deanna Dadusc is a Senior Lecturer at the School of Humanities and Social Science. Working at the intersection between sociology, geography and critical criminology, her research brings feminist and decolonial approaches to the study of state and border violence and of the criminalisation of resistance to it. Informed by paticipatory and community-oriented methodologies, Deanna's work has not only been informed by, but has also contributed to, political mobilisations and debates, impacting narratives and practices of civil society organisations.

Her work critically analyses the criminalisation of practices of  resistance in  Europe, including the criminalisation of migrants' mutul aid and  solidarity. She is currently running an AHRC IAA project titled: 'Storytelling the criminalisation of migration: memory, solidarity and resistance', in collaboration with criminalised people on the move. The project is aimed at decentering European narratives and visions on the criminalisation of migration, and to contextualise it within broader colonial and political trajectories. She is currently writing a book in collaboration with Prof. Pierpaolo Mudu titled 'Bordering Resistance' for Routledge, on the criminalisation of migration and solidarity.

In previous years, she dedicated her work to the criminalisation of grassroot home-making, housing struggles and autonomous urban spaces. This led to the publication of several contributions, as well as becoming guest editor for a special issue on the journal 'Citizenship Studies' titled: 'Citizenship as Inhabitance: Migrant Housing Squats as Alternatives to State Accommodation' in collaboration with Margherita Grazioli and Miguel Martinez (2020).

Together with Aila Spathopoulou and Camille Gendrot, Deanna co-coordinates the Feminist No Borders research area of the Feminist autonomous Centre for Research, where they co-organises the annual 'Feminist No Borders Summer School' (now in its 7th edition), as well as several research projects and community courses aimed at bridging struggles for prison abolition and border abolition from feminist perspectives (see ' The Criminalisation of Freedom of Movement' podcast series (supported by the University of Brighton IGNITE fund). 

At the University of Brighton, after being awarder a 'Rising Star Award' for her work on migrant housing struggles and practices of radical home making, Deanna became coordinator of the 'Radical Housing Forum', in collaboration with Sarah Leaney, and, amongst other workshops, they organised two international symposia on the 'Right to Home'.

Between 2018 and 2021, Deanna coordinated the 'Urban Movements and Resistance' research area of the Centre for Applied Philosophy, Politics and Ethics (CAPPE - University of Brighton). In 2022-2023, Deanna became coordinator of the 'Borders and Migration' research area at the Centre for Spatial, Environmental and Cultural Politics.

Betwenn 2019 and 2022 Deanna participated in the Erasmus+ BRIDGES consortium, which brought together Universities and Civil Society organisations to tackle exclusion and discrimination in Higher Education, by using decolonial, anti-racist and feminist approaches and methodologies.

Over the past years, Deanna was invited to, and participated in, numerous talks, conferences, symposia and workshops, including: American Association of Geographers Annual Conference ; European Group for the Study of Deviance & Social Control; European Society of Criminology ; IMISCOE annual conference; Radical Ecology Seminar Series; Royal Geographical Society Annual International Conference; International Conference of Anarchist Geographers and Geographies; International Conference of Critical Geography; Oxford Migration Conference;  Squatting in Europe Network Annual Conference.

I undertake research in the broad field of political ecology. My work is informed by intersectional feminist theory, critical development studies and environmental advocacy-activism around agrarian extractivism, with an empirical focus on responses to displacement, resettlement and dispossession in rural contexts in Indonesia. Current projects include work on the ways that gendered processes of mobility and migrant remittances unsettle linear analyses of dispossession associated with oil palm investment. I am also exploring ways to rethink feminist political ecology through engagement with anti-colonial environmental activisms in Southeast Asia and the practice of feminist political ecology pedagogy and research in diverse activist and professional contexts.

Dr David Haines’s research interests focus on occupational therapy with people with intellectual disabilities (learning disabilities) and in particular those with complex needs, including profound intellectual and multiple disabilities. He is interested in how we can support and enable people with intellectual disabilities to engage in occupations/ activities and how occupational justice can be promoted, in particular through improving the quality of support provided to individuals.

David is currently leading a series of action research projects in collaboration with occupational therapists in Kent Community Health Foundation NHS Trust.  They are developing a clinical reasoning/ thinking tool to be used by occupational therapists to think through how best to work with the support networks of people with intellectual disabilities when seeking to get recommendations adopted to improve the quality of support provided. Future projects will validate and evaluate the initial version of this tool.

With a strong grounding in qualitative research, Dr Haines is particularly interested in action research, ethnographic and case study methodologies, narrative research and in finding ethical means of involving those who may not have capacity as research participants in order that their needs may be researched and their support improved.

My research focus is the formation of classed identities. I am interested in the everyday experiences of people who live on council estates and the material and social conditions which produce and legitimate knowledges of these people and this place. My research explores the connections between place and identity through an analysis of the material and social production of the estate as a classed position. I am interested in the role of affect in the formation and reformation of classed selves. Specifically, developing Bourdieu’s conceptualisation of the habitus to explore the visceral sensation through which the body is disciplined in moments of difference.

My research interests revolve around three main areas:

1. LGBTQ equality issues and policies from a geographic perspective (locally, nationally, and transnationally);
2. The spaces made and used by LGBTQ communities such as neighbourhoods, bars, and social groups;
3. Issues of body image, shape and size amongst GBQ men, especially in the Bear subculture.

Most of my research has been done in partnership with LGBTQ community groups, charities, and activists from around the world. Through my teaching and research, I want to show and explore how we can use geography to improve LGBTQ lives.

Although my research interests centre on the field of mobilities, this is a broad area of research that incorporates many diverse topics. I have four main areas of interest within his field. Firstly, recent work has focused on intergenerational and gendered mobilities and gender-based violence. Secondly, I have worked for a number of years on mobilities and transport and the ways in which transport intersects with other social issues. Thirdly, my research seeks to understand the significance of urban physical spaces as sites of social interactions and design. Lastly, I continue to pursue new ways of carrying out research through creative research methodologies and methods. 

Tom's research concerns how the notion of home is conceptualised in sound art, sound studies and immersive media as a form of (auto)ethnographic practice.

He is also a learning technologist with a track record in digital pedagogies, including a pioneering study in mobile learning (the large scale EU-funded international Lifelong Learning SIMOLA project, and its mobile apps Lingobee, and Cloudbank, with the University of Brighton as lead partner) as a form of collaborative cultural practice.

• Film theory​
• Film production​
• Urban Studies  ​
• Cultural Geography​
• Creative media practice ​
• Sound Design and Sound Art
• Digital Pedagogies
• Lifelong Learning

I came to academia in 2021 after a 25-year career in journalism reporting on justice issues. My research interests span criminal justice, social justice and journalism.

I have a long-term commitment to miscarriages of justice, prisoners' rights, social justice and access to justice and legal aid.

Recent research

My edited collection Murder, Wrongful Conviction and the Law: An International Comparitive Anaysis was published by Routledge in 2023. It featured chapters from experts on miscarriages of justice in 14 countries: France, Germany, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Italy, Spain, US, Argentina, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Taiwan.  Each contributor was asked to provide an estimate of how many miscarriages of justice there might be in their jurisdiction; how often convictions were overturned; to describe the legal mechanism for the correction of a wrongful conviction; outline arrangements for compensation; identify common causes of miscarriages; and to explore the profile of miscarriages of justice. 

My most recent book was Justice in the Time of Austerity (Bristol University Press, 2021), and was written with an academic at Cardiff University, Daniel Newman. We conducted over original 200 interviews with people as they went through the justice system over the course of one year in a variety of settings from food banks, asylum seeker destitution services, homeless shelters to MP surgeries and court waiting rooms.

This book, according to  Shami Chakrabarti, is a 'call to arms'. 'If you are a tribute of the people who has ever poured scorn on activist lawyers, I dare you to read this. If you are a lawyer, or even even a concerned citizen, who has never felt comfortable with the activist tag, it just may tempt you to reconsider.'

Policy work

In June 2022, I was appointed special adviser to the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Miscarriages of Justice then chaired by Barry Sheerman MP and Sir Bob Neill with Glyn Maddocks KC and we run its secretariat. This work is undertaken under the Future of Justice Project and includes the new Westminister Commission on Forensic Science. You can read about our work on the Justice Gap here and in the Times here. 

Other

I am the founder/ editor of the Justice Gap (www.thejusticegap.com) - an online magazine about 'the law and justice - and the difference between the two'. The Justice Gap has a print magazine, Proof. The Justice Gap news reporting scheme is run by a collaboration between four universities: Cardiff, Manchester, University College London and Glasgow.

I am vice-chair of the Legal Action Group which campaigns for access to justice on behalf of people and communities who would otherwise by denied. 

I am also a patron of Hackney Community Law Centre; and on the advisory board of the legal charity APPEAL which investigates miscarrages of justice.

Journalism

I have written regularly for the Guardian, Observer (www.theguardian.com/profile/jonrobins), Independent and Independent on Sunday (www.independent.co.uk/author/jon-robins) as well as the Times, magazines and specialist journals.

I am twice winner of the Bar Council's journalist of the year; won the inaugural Halsbury Law award for journalism; and was shortlisted for the Criminal Justice Alliance's journalist of the year award. 

I’ve written a number of books, including Guilty Until Proven Innocent: the crisis in our justice system (Biteback, 2018) described by the Secret Barrister as ‘a no-holds-barred insight into the serious and often overlooked miscarriages of justice that stalk our broken justice system'. The journalist Catherine Baksi called it a book that 'informs, shocks and demands a response. It demands justice.'

• Justice in a Time of Austerity (Bristol University Press, 2021 - with Dr Dan Newman) which featured more than 200 original interviews conducted in food banks, homeless shelters, destitution services for asylum seekers, law centres and citizens advice bureaux, courts waiting rooms. Interview on Transforming Society podcast here and read about the project in the Guardian here.
• Guilty Until Proven Innocent: the crisis in our justice system (Biteback Press, 2018): This book examines the inability of our justice system to get to grips with miscarriages of justice by looking at cases of serious injustice over the last 20 years (interview on BBC South News here).
• The First Miscarriage of Justice (Waterside Press, 2014): an account of one man’s 43 year campaign to overturn his conviction. The Tony Stock case has been described as “one of the most outrageous miscarriages of justice in modern times“ - as mentioned in the House of Commons.
• The Justice Gap: Whatever happened to legal aid? (Legal Action Group, 2008 with Steve Hynes)
• People Power: how to campaign and make a difference (LawPack/ Daily Telegraph, 2008 with Paul Stookes)

Rebecca Searle is a contemporary historian whose work explores the ways in which the study of the past can be used to make critical interventions in the politics of the present. Her research focuses on housing, property and urban change in twentieth and twenty-first century Britain, examining the historical roots of the contemporary housing crisis and the relationship between property development, global finance and the ways housing markets reshape cities.

Her research is developed through collaborations with a range of community organisations, policymakers and local stakeholders. She is particularly interested in forms of co-produced research that bring together academic scholarship and local knowledge to better understand the forces shaping housing and urban development. She founded the University of Brighton Housing Forum, a network bringing together academics, policymakers and community organisations working on housing and urban development in Brighton and Hove.

Rebecca leads Who Owns Brighton, a community research project investigating property ownership and development in the city. Developed in partnership with the Brighton & Hove Community Land Trust and funded by the Civic Power Fund, the project brings together researchers and residents to explore what is being built in Brighton, who benefits from urban development, and how communities can better understand and intervene in the planning process.

Her wider research interests include the history of twentieth and twenty-first century Britain, particularly the history of gender and sexuality, war and conflict, and politics and political movements.

My research is centred very broadly around the psychological side of migration. Using a mixed-methods approach, the majority of my research investigates well-being of ethnic and religious minority groups, particularly refugees. I like to explore these topics from a multidisciplinary and policy-focused perspective, for example by investigating how refugee resettlement policies and support programmes can optimise opportunities and well-being of refugees. I am currently leading an ESRC-funded research project where we explore the link between the use of digital technologies, social relationships, and well-being among unaccompanied refugee children in the UK. A report of the pilot study, funded by eNurture, can be found here. I have conducted research projects in the UK, the Netherlands, Canada, and Chile. I am the founder and lead of the Inclusive Digital Societies Research Excellence Group here at the University of Brighton. 

My research focuses on community voices in town planning in New Towns Harlow and Hatfield. I am exploring the main players in the planning system in both towns, and the social, historical, political, economic or physical background to the towns which results in certain voices being more prominent than others in local planning matters. 

I am a Brazilian lawyer with over ten years of experience, including extensive work with LGBTQ+ organisations in Brazil, advocating for the rights and protection of queer communities. I hold a BA in Law and a master’s degree in Social Research Methods, and I am currently a PhD candidate in Social Sciences at the University of Brighton, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) in partnership with the South Coast Doctoral Training Partnership (SCDTP).

My research focuses on transforming public policies to tackle hate crimes against Brazil’s marginalised LGBTQ+ communities. I investigate the limits of criminal legislation in protecting queer people, and the extent to which hate crime laws have effectively contributed to addressing violence motivated by homophobic and/or transphobic acts.

I am a member of the Centre for Transforming Sexuality and Gender at the University of Brighton, an associate member of the British Society of Criminology, and the Uni Rep Cohort Representative for the South Coast Doctoral Training Partnership (SCDTP) for 2025–2026.

My research interests include critical criminology, socio-legal studies, queer studies, human rights, LGBTQ+ rights, Latin American studies, and research methods.

I have taught in the following modules and welcome invitations to contribute to similar areas:

• Radical Histories: Hate, Trauma, and the Limits of the Law — Guest lecture, University of Bristol, Nov 2025.

• Research Methods: Interviews, Thematic Analysis, and related qualitative approaches — University of Brighton, 2025–2026

Beatriz’s research interests go beyond the academic sphere. She is fundamentally an activist academic. She is a member of the Environmental Peacebuilding Association (EnPax), The Gender and Development Network (GADN), the Peace Research Seminar (SIP), the Women and Gender Constituency (WGC), one of the nine stakeholder groups of the United Nations Framework for the Convention of Climate Change (UNFCCC), and the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), where she is part of the Executive board in both its UK and Spain branches. Since 2020, she actively participates in WILPF’s WPS, Environment and Climate Justice working groups, and since 2023 she coordinates the research and actions around the Fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty initiative within WILPF Spain.

During the academic year 2022-2023, she is a PRG co-representative at the University’s Committee of Research Ethics and Integrity (UCOREI).

In early 2023, she co-coordinated the People & Planet’s petition for a fossil free careers service at the University of Brighton, for which, in May 2023, she submitted a motion to the University and College Union (UCU) Brighton branch, which passed unanimously.

She is a feminist, a pacifist, a unionist and an ecologist.

Currently researching the invisibility of sexual and gender-based violence in the Northern Irish conflict (between 1968-1998) and the impact of shedding light on this phenomenon on social policy and policy processes.

I am a PhD researcher and a professional storyteller, interested in particular in the folklore, mythology and social history of the British Isles; the intersection of stories, landscape and identity; the role of narrative in shaping culture and sense of self; and in using storytelling to understand past and present. My PhD uses storytelling practice and existing "eco-storytelling" models to look at the potential to improve community engagement and environmental awareness through increased awareness of local history, folklore, and one's own personal narratives. I am particularly keen to explore how such models can engage with urban/suburban life and space.

Other interests include the place of myth in subcultural/group identity (especially regarding popular music); the historical insights offered by medieval narratives such as the Mabinogion and Beowulf ; use of mythology and folklore in fiction; and culture and society in British prehistory.

Sadie Rockliffe is an ESRC SCDTP-funded PhD student researching the lived experiences of visually impaired (VI) individuals in blue spaces, with a focus on wellbeing, interdependence, and accessibility. Her work is informed by therapeutic landscape research, critical disability studies, and blue space geographies, examining how people with VI engage with aquatic environments beyond ocularcentric assumptions.

Sadie’s PhD will explore how VI individuals navigate and experience blue spaces, particularly within the social practice of outdoor swimming. While blue spaces are increasingly recognised for their therapeutic potential, they are also shaped by systemic exclusions, inaccessible infrastructures, and normative assumptions about ability, movement, and perception. This research highlights how water’s materiality—its movement, unpredictability, and sensory affordances—creates distinct embodied experiences, often overlooked in mainstream accessibility discourse.

The project is guided by participant-led inquiry, amplifying VI perspectives on blue space engagement. Rather than assuming all VI individuals interact with water in the same way, the research recognises diverse lived realities, shifting sensory capacities, and temporal experiences of sight loss. By centering sociomateriality, interdependence, and fluid accessibility frameworks, this study aims to rethink inclusion beyond static, infrastructure-based models, contributing to a more dynamic, participant-driven understanding of blue space access.

Before arriving at the University of Brighton, Sadie spent over 20 years working with governing bodies and local communities to build inclusive accessible events and destination management strategies.

I’m a disabled feminist academic, working in the subject areas of design justice, disability justice and mobilities. I consider myself to be a maker, designer, artist and disability rights activist. I'm currently in the first year of my PhD studentship at the University of Brighton. I am also an associate Lecturer at LCC university (UAL) in London, where I bring my expertise and knowledge of social and design justice to the curriculum. My previous professional experience includes working for large organisations like the NHS and Brighton and Hove city council in various roles relating to health and social care. Since becoming disabled, I have shifted my focus toward activism within the disabled community, especially in the arts scene in Brighton and Hove. I established and events organisation called VisAbility Arts between 2018 and 2021, our mission was to empower artists living with invisible disabilities by creating accessible spaces for them to sell and exhibit their work. Currently, I am a disabled panel member for Brighton and Hove's accessible city strategy, founder of the DiscReg (Disability Culture Research Group) and chair of the University of Brighton disabled and carer's staff network.

My PhD explores legacies of oppression that exist within traditional participatory design and research methodologies.My work aims to move beyond prevailing ideologies of inclusivity, particularly those formulated by individuals in positions of power. I instead argue that radical philosophical shifts in thinking are needed, where those who are conventionally designated as the recipients of inclusivity lead the discourse. My work aims to rethink design and research methodologies from an ontological perspective enabling new ways of mobilising marginalised communities. This focus on mobilities over participation enables designers and researchers to practice working within frameworks that actively dismantle these legacies of oppression.