Call for participants: Urban surfaces: graffiti, posters, and visual governance in the city

Location: University of Melbourne’s Parkville campus | Map
Language: English
Poster for the Melbourne workshop call for participants featuring a photo of an urban surface. Image by USRN team.

Deadline: 19 September 2025

Workshop dates: 3-4 December 2025

Location: Melbourne Centre for Cities, University of Melbourne, Australia

– The workshop will take place at the University of Melbourne’s Parkville campus on Wednesday 3 and Thursday 4 December 2025 and is in-person only.

– Day 1 (full day) consists of presentation panels and roundtables focused on sharing research and practice, and exploring methodological tools to understand urban surfaces. Day 2 (half day) is designed as a site-visit working session focused on the governance of urban images and graffiti removal as creative practice.

– The event is conceived as a small scale, deep study session for approximately 20 participants. There will not be an audience for the event and all participants are expected to contribute to the discussion and research activities. There is no registration fee; and lunches and a dinner on the first evening will be catered.

– Early career colleagues are particularly encouraged to apply. Four regional travel and accommodation bursaries are available from interstate Australia and New Zealand. We will consider subsidising travel costs for colleagues coming from further afield on a case by case basis. NB full time employed colleagues are unlikely to be considered for bursaries.

This workshop is funded by the Urban Studies Foundation Seminar Series Award “Walls speak. Are you listening? A research agenda for urban surfaces” (USF-SSA-250602). Calls for the next two workshops in Nicosia, Cyprus (May 2026) and Uppsala, Sweden (August 2026) will be circulated in due course.

For any questions, please get in touch with the organisers:

Melbourne workshop: Sabina Andron, sabina.andron@unimelb.edu.au
Nicosia workshop: Konstantinos Avramidis, avramidis.konstantinos@ucy.ac.cy
Uppsala workshop: Tom Ward, tom.ward@kultgeog.uu.se

"The USF has played a crucial role in creating space for urban research that not only moves beyond academic spheres but also values embodied, decolonial, and insurgent ways of knowing. As a queer geographer working in and through the messy, affective terrains of urban India, this Fellowship didn’t just fund my research — it affirmed it. It gave me the courage and capacity to experiment with form, to centre marginal voices, and to hold space for joy, pain, memory, and resistance in my work. I remain in awe of the nurturing, and genuinely transformative support USF continues to offer its Fellows — during, and far beyond, the fellowship period."

Dr Dhiren Borisa, International Fellowship

Urban Studies Foundation is a registered Scottish charity. Registration number SC039937.

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