Welcome to the
Urban Surfaces Research Network!

The Urban Surfaces Research Network (USRN) leads international multi-disciplinary scholarship into the role of surfaces as spaces of urban communication, governance, and political contestation.

We are a group of scholars, artists and practitioners interested in urban surfaces as sites of collective life. We explore how surfaces are designed, managed, and valued as public assets, to enrich the diversity of public expression in global cities.

Our network has leading global expertise in surface-related subject areas such as: public and communal spaces; contemporary and historical graffiti and mark-making; urban graphic heritage; public signage and urban semiotics; urban media; urban surface design, labour, and maintenance; and more-than-human surface worlds.

The Story
We established the USRN in 2023 as a conversation between an urban scholar in Australia (Sabina), an architectural designer in Cyprus (Konstantinos), and a geographer in Sweden (Tom), to explore the affordances of surfaces for a variety of urban questions.

Sabina had just moved to Melbourne from London to begin a postdoc at the Melbourne Centre for Cities and was about to publish Urban Surfaces, Graffiti, and the Right to the City, Konstantinos was starting as Assistant Professor in Architecture at the University of Cyprus, and Tom had just started a PhD in Human Geography at Uppsala University. We knew each other from when Konstantinos co-edited the 2017 book Graffiti and Street Art that Sabina wrote for; and from a pandemic-era Zoom call when Tom pitched to Sabina his project on mural economies and hand-painted advertising.

We wanted to host a one-off gathering to bring together our favourite scholars, and we ended up developing a multi-year project with more than 150 researchers from around the world.

This Website

The website is like us:
layered
_complex
cacophonous contradictory
bursting with energy _and ideas
p l a y f u l and

a super resource of many minds that do not exist together anywhere else.

If you want to connect Network

If you want to read Publications

If you want to play Surface

If you want to learn Manifesto

If you want to participate Events

The Team

Dr. Sabina Andron

I am an urban researcher, educator, and creative practitioner working on public images and visual cultures in cities. I currently hold an Australian Research Council DECRA Fellowship at the University of Melbourne’s Centre for Cities, leading the project “Visual governance in the city: rethinking graffiti and public images”. My first monograph, Urban surfaces, graffiti, and the right to the city was shortlisted for the Jane Jacobs Urban Communication Award in 2024. I am the Chair of the Australasian Early Career Urban Researchers Network (AECURN) and a co-editor of Visual Studies.

https://sabinaandron.com/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/sabinaandron/

@sabinaandron

Dr. Konstantinos Avramidis

I am a design researcher, educator, and curator, and currently an Assistant Professor of Architecture at the University of Cyprus. My research and creative practice explore architectural drawing, urban traces, graffiti and street art, and visual cultures of the city. I co-founded Drawing On journal and the Routledge Advances in Graffiti and Street Art Research book series, and coedited Graffiti and Street Art: Reading, Writing and Representing the City (Routledge, 2017), Kessariani 22: Histories and Projects (Themelio, forthcoming) and Drawing-led Research in Architecture (Intellect, forthcoming).
https://www.ucy.ac.cy/directory/en/profile/kavram01

https://www.linkedin.com/in/konstantinosavramidis/

@kon.avramidis

Tom Ward

I am an unapologetically ardent geographer, and currently a PhD Candidate in Human Geography at Uppsala University. My research interests lie within urban, cultural and legal geography, and my current research explores labours of painting in the East London advertising industry. I have been invited to speak in Australia, Sweden and the UK, and I have published in Street Art and Urban Creativity and Public Art Dialogue.

https://www.uu.se/en/contact-and-organisation/staff?query=N22-2364

https://www.linkedin.com/in/tom-ward-2249a8234/

Contact Us

USRN members are folks who have participated in one of our events, workshops, or publications. To become a member, you must first engage in one of our activities. Until then, you are welcome to get in touch with any of us and follow what we do.

Updates about our activities are posted on this website, on our Insta pages, and on Linkedin. We also have a Linkedin group where members share updates, and a shared inbox where you can reach us: urbansurfacesnetwork@gmail.com. You can also write on the wall and maybe the right people will see your message.

We do not have a newsletter.

Website Design ._. Enzo Lara-Hamilton

About

Events

Network

Manifesto

Publications

Surface