Dr Regan Koch

Profile

 

I'm an urban and cultural geographer fascinated by public life in cities. My interests include varied forms of collective culture and sociality, and questions of how urban environments can be organised to help us live together in more mutually beneficial ways. Focused on contemporary London and cities across the U.S., as well as a burgeoning interest in Taiwan and China, my research to date has centred on three themes:            

• Urban publicness. Public space has been a longstanding concern in critical urban scholarship, and my work has sought re-animate this field of study. This includes advocating for careful attention to how different spaces of public life are put together and to the affects that different kinds of materiality, infrastructure, modes of inhabitation, and forms of regulation have in making urban spaces what they are.  I am also interested on-going, everyday forms of negotiation about what is fair and appropriate for living together in a pluralistic society.
• Urban sociality and collective culture. Cities are full of new cultural trends and innovations that overlap with, and sometimes go against, more established ways of living together - new ways of making a living, eating and drinking, socialising, getting from A to B, and meeting new people, to name just a few.  By examining different forms of social interaction, novel kinds of spaces and practices, and the efforts of entrepreneurs and innovators, I’m curious to explore possibilities for living together better in cities.
• Representing and imagining cities. Parallel to my interest in urban public life is a concern with popular and academic discourse about cities and neighbourhoods. This includes examining how we understand and portray processes of urban change, new developments and trends, and the lifestyles and culture of different kinds of urban dwellers. In particular, I am concerned with understanding the work that different kinds of representation do and the geographical imaginations they enable.  

My work has been supported by grants from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), the Arts and Humanities Council (AHRC), Queen Mary's Public Impact Funds, Research England, University College London’s Graduate School, University College London’s Public Engagement Unit, the American Association of Geography’s Urban Geography Research Group.  

Over the past several years, I have served as the Director of The City Centre at QMUL, and been the QMUL Lead for LISS Doctoral Training Programme, Pathway 8: Urbanisation, Social Change and Transformation. I was organising committee member and communication director for the Royal Geographical Society’s Urban Geography Research Group, and was a founding member of the Stadkolloquium Urban PhD Research Network. 

Key publications:

• Koch, R. and Miles, S. (2020) ‘Letting the stranger in: intimacy, technology and new geographies of encounter.  Progress in Human Geography.
• Koch, R. (2020) Public, private and the appeal to common good: practices of justification in a peer-to-peer economy. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 45(2): 392-405.
• Koch, R. and Latham, A. (eds) (2017). Key Thinkers on Cities. London: Sage. Available in Mandarin (2019) 城市思想家: ISBN: 978-7-5426-6502-7.
• Koch, R. and Latham, A. (2013) ‘On the hard work of domesticating a public space’, Urban Studies 50(1) p. 6-21.

Teaching

I am foremost an enthusiastic teacher and collaborator. My first degree was in Education and the Social Sciences, followed by an MSc in Teaching and Learning. My first job was teaching middle school in Kansas City, Kansas and then secondary school in London, where I was also Head of a successful Geography department for five years. Prior to joining QMUL I was a teaching fellow at UCL and was shortlisted for the Students’ Choice Excellence in Teaching Award. I have been shortlisted three times for the QMUL Excellence in Teaching awards. 

Current teaching:

Undergraduate

• GEG6148 The Public Life of Cities (convenor)
• GEG5126 Cultural Geographies (convenor)
• GEG4006 Cities and Regions in Transition

Postgraduate

• GEG7123 Ideas and Practice in Geography 

For a number of years I have run immersive field classes London’s Urban Geographies and Encountering Global London for St Lawrence University of New York’s London Programme.

 

Research

Research Interests:

The Public Life of Cities

I am currently working on a monograph entitled The Public Life of Cities with Prof Alan Latham (UCL) to be published with The University of Toronto Press. The project pulls together our research on urban materialities, sociality and governance through a range of case studies in North America, Europe and New Zealand.

BlueGreenE17: Exploring visions for a Wilder Walthamstow

East London is undergoing significant environmental change driven by pressures for new housing and urban development, gentrification and socio-economic change. Focused on Walthamstow, this project explores the possibilities for maintaining and promoting biodiversity and wildlife at different scales within an urban neighbourhood. Research activities have included stakeholder interviews and public photograph submissions, as well as a public exhibition and workshops. 

Eating in Public: Re-imagining Collective Urban Life

My ESRC-funded doctoral research at University College London was an ethnographic study of food-related trends across the U.S.  My interest was to examine some of the novel ways in which the spaces of public life are being re imagined and to invigorate the study of public space in social science research.  The project builds upon a critique of predominant approaches to urban public space, arguing that recent work on the topic has reached something of an empirical and theoretical impasse. In pressing for a more expansive imaginary, the project has worked to develop a broader conceptualisation of public-ness along with a series of analytic principles, theoretical resources and attentive registers for opening up new lines of inquiry.

As the starting point for future work in this vein, my goal is to help facilitate discussion, research and innovation in how more convivial, inclusive and democratic forms of collective life might be nurtured.

Animating public space: Transformations at the Prince of Wales Junction, West London

This project examined a small-scale urban redevelopment that sought to transform a traffic junction best known for crime and anti-social behaviour into a public space that would be an asset for the local community. Research involved an ethnographic study in which I worked on-site as a fruit and vegetable vendor over a period of three months. The aim was to attend to the fine-grained details of how public life was being reconfigured by the changes, and to extend the conceptual registers through which transformations to urban public spaces might be apprehended.

Outcomes of this research (co-authored with Dr. Alan Latham at UCL) have been published in Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, Urban Studies, Public Space and the Challenges of Urban Transformation in Europe (eds. Madanipour et al. 2014) and a pair of teaching resources for the Royal Geographical Society.

Publications

Book

• Koch, R. and Latham, A. (eds) (2017). Key Thinkers on Cities. London: Sage. Available in Mandarin (2019) 城市思想家. ISBN: 978-7-5426-6502-7.

Peer-reviewed journal articles

• Koch, R. and Miles, S. (2020) ‘Letting the stranger in: intimacy, technology and new geographies of encounter.  Progress in Human Geography.
• Koch, R. (2020) Public, private and the appeal to common good: practices of justification in a peer-to-peer economy. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers. 45(2): 392-405.
• Koch, R. and Latham, A. (2018) ‘How to think about cities: a reply to our critics’, Urban Studies, 55(13) p. 3034-3047.
• Koch, R. (2016) ‘Licensing, popular practices and public spaces: An inquiry via the geographies of street food vending’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 39(6) p. 1231-1250.
• Koch, R. and Latham, A. (2013) ‘On the hard work of domesticating a public space’, Urban Studies 50(1) p. 6-21.
• Koch, R. and Latham, A. (2012) ‘Re-thinking urban public space: accounts from a junction in West London’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 37(4) p. 515-529.

Book chapters and edited collections

• Koch, R. (2024) 'Urban Theory' in Introducing Human Geographies. 
• Koch, R. (2017) ‘Mariana Valverde’ in Koch, R. and Latham, A. (eds) Key Thinkers on Cities. London: SAGE
• Arabindoo, P and Koch, R. (2015) 'The pedagogy of (urban) practice’, Scroope: The Cambridge Architectural Journal, Volume 32: 109-115.
• Koch, R and Latham, A. (2014) ‘Representing and Imagining the City’ in Paddison, R. and McCann, E. (eds) Cities and Social Change. London: Sage
• Koch, R. and Latham, A. (2014) ‘Inhabiting cities, domesticating public spaces: Observing changes in the public life of contemporary London’ in A. Madanipour and S. Knierbein (eds) Public Space and the Challenges of Urban Transformation in Europe. London: Routledge
• Koch, R. (2011) Food: the ‘new art’ in cities? The Food Junctions Cookbook. London: UCL Office of Public Engagement

Teaching resources

• Koch, R. and Latham, A. (2012) ‘Animating Public Space: A Case Study in ‘Soft Regeneration’ Royal Geographical Society, Geography in the News, A-Level teaching resources for the RGS. Pdf available through the RGS (or author).
• Koch, R. (2012) ‘Interview the Expert: Regan Koch on Public Space’ Royal Geographical Society, Geography in the News, available at: http://www.geographyinthenews.org/interviews/article/default.aspx?id=1855

Book reviews

• Koch, R. (2023) 'Infrastructure: New Directions in Law' by Mariana Valverde, Urban Studies.  
• Koch, R. (2023) 'The Promise of Pragmatism' by Robert Lake and Jane Wills, Annals of the American Association of Geographers. 
• Koch, R. (2010) 'Loose Space: Possibility and Diversity in Urban Life' by Karen A. Franck and Quentin Stevens. New Zealand Geographer, 66, p. 174-176.
• Koch, R. (2010) 'Designs on the Public: The Private Lives of New York’s Public Spaces' by Kristine Miller. Environment Planning B: Planning and Design, 37(3), p. 572-573.

Please email me if you’d like to have a copy of any of these.

Supervision

My research interests include matters of urban publicness; sociality and collective culture; and the representation and imagination of cities and urban life.  I was honoured to be runner-up for Postgraduate Supervisor of the Year in the QMUL Student Union Awards, 2019.

I welcome inquiries from anyone considering a PhD or Research Fellowship and would be happy to discuss whether our interests make for a good match. 

Current PhD students:

• Estell Broyer 'Experimenting with Low-Traffic Neighbourhoods (LTNs) in London: An inquiry into the negotiation of competing public goods'. QMUL Principals Scholarship Funded (with Joe Hoover, SPIR) 
• Jack Hanlon ‘Meat, masculinity and the marketplace: Smithfield in the late 20^th century’. Funding: LAHP-AHRC CASE Award with the Museum of London (with Alastair Owens and Will Monteith)
• Deivi Norberg ‘Uncertainty under the arches: National Rail’s property selloff and the possibilities for public good’. Funding: ESRC 1+3 CASE Award with the East London Trades Guild (with Will Monteith)
• Conor Moloney ‘Playing or being played: the rise of ‘ludic urbanism’ in London (working title). Funding: ESRC +3 (with Professor Jen Harvie, QMUL School of English and Drama).

Former PhD students:

• Rosalie Warnock 'Navigating, Feeling and Living ‘SEND’: Parent and Practitioner Experiences of Raising Autistic Children at a Time of Austerity.' Funding: ESRC 1+3 (with Professor Jon May). Rosalie is now a Lecturer in Geography at Kings College London. 
• Teresa Franco Aguilar ‘Understanding Everyday Urban Mobilities in Mexico City through Cultural Representations.’ Funding: Mexican Governmental +4 Scholarship (with Professor Cathy Mcllwaine, KCL)
• Sam Miles ‘Sex(uality) & the city: location-based apps and queer urban life.' Funding: Sam is now a Senior Lecturer in Medical Sociology at QMUL.

Postdoctoral mentorship

• Katherine Stansfeld ‘Living together in the super-diverse city: mapping vernacular geographies and urban relational space’. Funding: LISS ESRC Postdoctoral Award. Katherine is now a Lecturer the UPCH Geography and Built Environment programme at UCL. 
  
• Mirjam Sagi ‘Marginalised groups and the rhetoric of safety in public space – a feminist perspective’. Funding: Erasmus Doctoral Exchange (with ELTE, Hungary)

Public Engagement

I have engaged in an academic, volunteer and consultancy capacities with a number of groups related to my case study research, including The Museum of London; The East End Traders Guild; The Serpentine Gallery, the London Parks and Green Spaces Forum; Seattle’s Street Vendor Task Force; New York’s Street Vendor Project; A Better World Foundation; the Harrow Road Neighbourhood Partnership; and The Museum of the Home.                                                    

In 2010, I was the program manager of Food Junctions, a five-day series of talks, workshops, performances and events bringing together over 300 members from 30 academic departments at UCL and 20 outside organisations.

Recent presentations to non-academic audiences include:  

• ‘Up all Night.’ The Dark: Preview. Museum of the Home. February 2020
• ‘How urban geography shapes our lives and culture’, Introducing Dark City at the Being Human Festival, London, November 16, 2015
• ‘If he were in this place’, UCL Festival of the Arts, London, April 18, 2015
• ‘The unintended consequences of licensing public spaces’, London Parks and Green Spaces Forum, May 24, 2014
• Spaces of community, publicness and social relations’, 2012 Community Kitchen Summit Santa Fe, New Mexico January 15, 2012