Laura Vaughan BDes MSc PhD SEDA
Lecturer in Urban Transformations
Director of MSc Advanced Architectural Studies
Principal Investigator EPSRC First Grant project: Space and Exclusion
l.vaughan@ucl.ac.uk
Laura Vaughan is the Course Director for the MSc in Advanced Architectural
Studies at the Bartlett Graduate School and runs the Urban Transformations module
within that course.
The MSc in Advanced Architectural Studies brings together within the single
theoretical and analytical framework known as ‘space syntax’, the
study of architecture from the scale of buildings to entire cities. The course
is built around the idea that by studying buildings and cities as patterns of
space, we can derive wholly new insights into the relations between them and
the individuals, communities and organizations that inhabit them.
Current research interests include the effects of urban structure on poverty,
social exclusion and immigrant settlement patterns. Her experience lies in the
study of the underlying spatial structure of cities in order to investigate
the spatial clustering of ethnic minorities in urban ‘ghettos’.
Dr Vaughan’s current EPSRC funded research study [entitled: Space and Exclusion:
the relationship between physical segregation and economic marginalisation in
the urban environment (start date: 01/09/2003)] is investigating this ‘underlying
spatial effect’, using techniques, including space syntax methods, which
have been developed to provide an objective method of measuring spatial configuration.
This study aims to further the understanding of the underlying processes involved
in the spatial formation of cities and their effects on the communities they
contain. Dr Vaughan’s current research is based on the premise that the
spatial configuration of the city can itself have an impact on such phenomena
as poverty – and that poverty related to migration might have particular
spatial characteristics. This premise has been borne out by her research into
the spatialisation of immigrant settlement in 19th century London, Manchester
and Leeds and by research by others in the field, which has found that cities
contain areas of persistence in poverty which cannot be explained other than
by an underlying spatial effect.
Prior to joining UCL in 2001, Laura was Research Associate and Company Secretary
at Space Syntax Limited, a UCL technology transfer company. Laura’s first
degree was in Environmental Design from the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design,
Jerusalem, Israel (after which she practiced as an architect for several years)
and her Masters degree in Advanced Architectural Studies was completed at the
Bartlett in 1994.
E-mail address: l.vaughan@ucl.ac.uk