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Dr Bradley L Garrett

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• Current Research
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Academic Profile

Bradley L Garrett joined the Technological Natures research cluster in October 2012. He holds a BS in Anthropology and a BA in History from the University of California Riverside (2003) as well as an MA in Maritime Archaeology from James Cook University, Australia (2005). Brad completed his PhD at Royal Holloway, University of London in February 2012. His doctoral research was a visual ethnography with urban explorers, people who trespass into, and often photograph, off-limits urban spaces. The research was one of the first multimedia theses in geography, being comprised of text, photography and video. Prior to 2008, Brad worked for several years as a heritage consultant and archaeologist for the United States Bureau of Land Management and several Native American tribes.

Brad's research interests revolve around ruins and waste, material culture, heritage, urban life, place-making practices, spatial politics, ethnography and digital media methodologies. All of Brad's past, current and future projects work to reveal, through embodied engagement, the hidden world.

Current Research

Brad recently completed his first monograph, Explore everything: place hacking the city, which will be published by Verso Books in 8th October 2013. His second book, Underground London: cracking the surface, will be released by Prestel Publishing in Autumn 2014.

Brad also has two new research projects currently under development. The first is the creation of a 3D audio and augmented reality phone and tablet app that traces London's hidden rivers. The second explores the ways in which new technologies and changing political and economic imperatives are transforming human relationships to outer space.

Selection of Recent Publications

• Garrett B.L. (in press, 8th October 2013) Explore everything: Place hacking the city, Verso Books, London, release date 8th October 2013.
• Garrett B.L. (in press, 2013) Undertaking recreational trespass: urban exploration and infiltration. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers.
• Garrett, B.L. (in press, 2013) Worlds through glass: photography and video as geographic method. In, Ward, K. (ed.) Researching the City. SAGE Publication, London, UK, publication date December 2013.
• Garrett, B.L. (in press, 2013) The affectual affordances of industrial urban exploration. In, Orange, H. and S. Penrose (eds.) Reanimating Industrial Spaces. Left Coast Press, Walnut Creek, CA, USA.
• Garrett, B.L. (2012) Videographic geographies: using digital video for human geography research. In, Hughes, J. (ed.) SAGE Visual Methods, SAGE Publications, London, UK. 1672pp. ISBN: 9781446241028.
• Garrett, B.L. (2012) Edgework: Getting Close, Getting Cut, Getting Out. Speculative Geographies (Volume II), The State, United Arab Emirates.
• Brickell, K. and Garrett, B.L. (2012) Geography, film and exploration: women and amateur filmmaking in the Himalayas. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 31(1): 7-11.
• Anton, M., Garrett, B.L., Hess, A., Miles, E. and Moreau, T. (2012) London's Olympic waterscape: capturing transition. International Journal of Heritage Studies (invited article for special issue), 19(2): 125-138.
• Garrett, B.L. (2011) Assaying history: creating temporal junctions through urban exploration. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 29(6): 1048-1067.
• Garrett, B.L. (2011) Cracking the Paris carrières: corporal terror and illicit encounter under the City of Light. ACME: An International E-Journal for Critical Geographies, 10(2): 269-277.
• Garrett, B.L., Rosa., B. and Prior, J. (2011) Jute: excavating material and symbolic surfaces. Liminalities, the Journal of Performance Studies, 7(2), (paper and video article).
• Sigvardsdotter, E. and Garrett, B.L. (2011) 'The Tree' by Torgny Lindgren (translated from the Swedish). Asymptote Journal, April 2011 issue.
• Garrett, B.L. (2010) Urban explorers: quests for myth, mystery and meaning. Geography Compass, 4(6): 1448-1461, (paper and video article).
• Garrett, B.L. (2010) Videographic geographies: using digital video for human geography research. Progress in Human Geography, 35(4): 521-541.
• Garrett, B.L. (2009) Drowned memories: the submerged places of the Winnemem Wintu. Archaeologies: Journal of the World Archaeological Congress, 6(2): 346-371.

Selected Media appearances

• 2013 - Viaggio nelle inaccessibili «ghost stations» di Londra, Corriere della Sera, Milan, Italy.
• 2013 - Excuse us while we kiss the sky, GQ Magazine, March 2013, written by Matthew Power, pp 133-146.
• 2013 - The secret sightseers, Red Bulletin, January 2013 Issue, pp. 30-41.
• 2012 - Meet Oxford's New Researcher, James Cannon Show, BBC Radio Oxford, Oxford, UK, 26th November, first aired 5:45pm GMT.
• 2012 - Forgive us our trespasses, Evening Standard Magazine, written by Richard Godwin, 15th June 2011, pp. 12-19.
• 2012 - Research will Delve into Rich Layers of History, Oxford Mail, written by Jamie Brooks, Oxford, UK, 23rd November 2012.
• 2012 - Big Picture: Urban exploration, The Guardian Magazine, London, UK, 21st September 2012.
• 2012 - Meet a Geographer, Geographical Magazine, August issue, Royal Geographical Society, London, UK.
• 2012 - The London chronicles: Memory, BBC World Service, produced by Francesca Panetta, first broadcast 10th July 2012.
• 2012 - Britain by night, ITV, produced by Plum Pictures, first broadcast August 30th, 2012.
• 2012 - Between the ears: Invisible cities, BBC Radio 3, produced by Falling Tree Productions, produced by Eleanor McDowall, first broadcast 2nd June 2012.
• 2012 - Security at the London 2012 Olympics (guest interview), CBC (Canada), first broadcast 5th July 2012.
• 2012 - The Legacy of the Shard (guest interview), RTL Broadcasting (Germany), first broadcast 7th July 2012.
• 2012 - Meet place hacker Bradley L. Garrett (guest interview), West Coast Live with Sedge Thompson, San Francisco, California, first broadcast June 30th 2012.
• 2012 - Meet the explorers who climbed the Shard, ITV Daybreak Show (show guest with Lucinda Grange), first broadcast 13th April, 2012.
• 2012 - GeoQuiz, Public Radio International's The World, first broadcast April 11th, 2012.
• 2011 - Londra Underground: L'esplorazione del sottosuolo ci rende cittadini più consapevoli? Il caso Londra, Studio Magazine, Nicola Bozzi, 4th October.
• 2011 - Urban explorers enter London's landmarks, Evening Standard, by Lucy Osborn, 10th November 2011.
• 2011 - Londres et les visiteurs du soir, Le Temps, written by Julie Zaugg, Switzerland, published 19th June 2011.
• 2011 - En fotos: Viaje a uno de los secretos mejor guardados de Londres, BBC Mundo, written by Rosario Gabino, published 3rd May 2011.

Conference and Workshop Presentations

• 2013 (forthcoming) - Creative underbelly: nocturnal interventions in transport, ESRC funded Forge Mini-Symposium "Disused Transport Infrastructure in Research and Practice: Interdisciplinary and Pan-European Perspectives", 13th June, University College London, London.
• 2013 - Track running: Heritage and security implications in disused infrastructure, University of Oxford Transport Studies Unit Seminar, 27th February, Oxford.
• 2013 - Adventure under your feet, Night of Adventure charity event for Hopes and Homes for Children, March 11th, Vue Cinema, Leicester Square, London.
• 2013 - The force of images: creating imaginative space through photography of the hidden city, King's College London Cities Seminar, 7th March, London.
• 2013 - Secrets of the hidden city, Oxford School of Geography and the Environment Technological Natures Seminar, 13th March, Oxford.
• 2012 - Getting a grip on time slip: decay fetishism in an age of austerity, Ruins and Radiation workshop, Whitworth Art Gallery, University of Manchester, 28th November, Manchester.
• 2012 - Recoding urban space through place hacking, Taking Place, CRASSH Graduate Research Group, University of Cambridge, 29th October, Cambridge.
• 2012 - Capital striation, Brighton Photo Biennial, Brighton, UK 24th October 2012.
• 2012 - Recoding urban space through place hacking, Taking Place, CRASSH Graduate Research Group, University of Cambridge, 29th October, Cambridge, UK.
• 2012 - Spatio/temporal collapse factors, Ruins and Radiation workshop, Whitworth Art Gallery, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK, 28th November.
• 2012 - Emotion dump, Stichting Idee-fixe (IDFX), Breda, Netherlands, 13th September 2012.
• 2012 - Exploring the uncanny, The Stone Tapes I, CTM.12: Festival for Adventurous Music and Related Arts, Berlin, Germany, 3rd February 2012.
• 2010 - Place hacking - tales of urban exploration, Royal Geographical Society with the Institute of British Geographers Annual Conference, 1st - 3rd September 2010, London, UK.
• 2010 - Transgressive mobilities and place hacking: embodied experiences of urban exploration, American Association of Geographers annual conference, Washington D.C., USA 14th-18th April 2010.
• 2009 - I think it's unlocked: exploring remnants of industry, 2009 Theoretical Archaeology Group (TAG) conference, Durham, UK, 17th-19th December 2009.
• 2009 - Bring your own torch: an ethnography of urban exploration, Royal Geographic Society annual conference, London, UK, 26th-28th August 2009.
• 2009 - Submerged tribal memory: the case of the Winnemem Wintu, American Association of Geographers annual conference, Las Vegas, Nevada, 22nd-27th March 2009.

Selected Conference Session Convening

• 2011 - Sensing the City session organized with Sue Ball and Bob Levene, Compass Festival of Live Art, Leeds, 25th-27th November.
• 2011 - Moving geographies: film and video as research method with Katherine Brickell and Jessica Jacobs, RGS-IBG Annual Meeting, 31st August - 2nd September 2011.
• 2010 - Video as method in geography symposium (chair) at Royal Holloway, University of London Landscape Surgery, 9th December, London, UK.
• 2010 - Urban subversions: conceptualising alternative urban pastimes in the modern world city, Session organizer (3 sessions with Oli Mould), Royal Geographical Society with the Institute of British Geographers Annual Conference, 1st - 3rd September, London, UK.