Dr Luke Dickens

Luke is a human geographer specialising in the cultural politics of urban change and the urban lives of children and young people.

Luke joined the Department of Geography in 2016, having worked previously as a lecturer at the University of Oxford. Prior to this, he worked on the AHRC-funded Energy Generation and ESRC-funded Creating Hackney as Home projects at the Open University; the EPSRC-funded Storycircle project at Goldsmiths, University of London; and at The National Foundation for Youth Music.

Luke is currently writing a monograph based on a recently completed joint British Academy/Leverhulme funded research project entitled ‘The Fun Palace and the Future City’ (2017-19). This work explores child-centric forms of utopian urbanism with an emphasis on pleasure, play and participation.

Research

• Urban transformations and futures
• Urban childhoods and youth cultures
• Playful and ‘child friendly’ urbanisms
• Cultural economies, creativity and the city
• Public and participatory methodologies

Teaching

Undergraduate

• 4SSG1008 Geography Tutorials: Critical Thinking and Techniques
• 4SSG1016 Geography in Action
• 5SSG2017 Historical Geographies of Urbanism
• 5SSG2058 Urban Geography: Exploring the City [Convenor]
• 5SSG2061 Geographical Research Skills
• 6SSG3085 Growing Up Urban: Childhood, Youth and the City [Convenor]

Postgraduate

• 7SSG5002 Practising Social Research
• 7SSG5179 Understanding the Sustainable City

PhD supervision

Luke is a member of the Urban Futures research domain, and would welcome enquiries from potential postgraduate students or collaborators who might share his research interests outlined above. Please feel free to get in touch for an informal discussion.

If you are interested in undertaking a PhD at King’s, please provide an outline of your topic and explain how it relates to the research interests above.

• Principal supervisor: Isobel Ward - Thesis title: 'The Cultural Politics of Home in Tottenham and Kings Cross - The Uneven Geographies of Home'

• Secondary supervisor: Jacob Fairless Nicholson - Thesis title: 'A cultural and historical geography of informal and alternative Black education spaces in London, 1969-1983'