The autumn of 2023 involved me in contributing to three brilliant and timely architecture conferences, the first, alongside the amazing Mabel Wilson, a keynote for the feminist conference led by Group Hultzsch Institute for the History and Theory of Architecture (gta), ETH Zurich, Listening In: Conversations on Architectures, Cities, Landscapes 1700-1900, (September 2023), and then via zoom, for Manifestos for Future Design Studio Pedagogies, GSD Harvard, (October 2023), led by Rosalea Monacella and others, and interrupted by protests related to the Israel Gaza war; and then later in October 2023, another keynote, for Situated Ecologies of Care, the AHRA Annual Conference, beautifully curated by Alex Zambelli and Oren Lieberman. Towards the end of the year, I was also invited to give the Annual Public Lecture, for KISS, the Centre for Interdisciplinary Spatial Studies, at the University of Kent, (November 2023), a focus for critical legal studies amongst other ground-breaking interdisciplinary research.

This winter saw the publication of two articles connected with the loss of my father: ‘After he had gone,’ for an exquisite issue of CounterText, relating to the work of Roland Barthes, Fragments of a Lover’s Discourse: Translating Again, Writing Again, co-edited by Patrick ffrench and Timothy Mathews, April 2023, and then as spring slowly began, with the strangest warmest February I can remember, and the wars on Gaza and Ukraine ongoing, ‘L is for …. Lucia, Laura and Architecture’s other Lost Daughters’, for the special issue of The Journal of Architecture focused on the work of Jennifer Bloomer and her deeply fruitful legacy for feminist architectural practice, inspiringly edited by Emma Cheatle and Helene Frichot.

Several new articles were also published which develop my collaborative work on practising ethics: with Yael Padan and Tim Ndezi, ‘Researching with care: ethical dilemmas in co-designing focus group discussions,’ Environment & Urbanization, (2022); led by David Roberts, with Yael Padan, Ariana Markowitz, and Emmanuel Otuseye, ‘Practising ethics: guides for built environment research,’ The Journal of Architecture, (2022); led by Catalina Ortiz and Yael Padan, with Belen Desmaison, Vanesa Castan Broto, Teddy Kisembo, Judith Mbabazi, Paul Mukwaya, Hafisa Namuli, Shuaib Lwasa, ‘Affective Infrastructures of Knowledge Co-Production,’ in a special issue of Urban Transcripts, ‘Emotions and the City,’ ed. Nina Margies, (December 2022); and led by Catalina Ortiz and Yael Padan, with Belen Desmaison, Teddy Kisembo, Judith Mbabazi, Paul Mukwaya, and Vanesa Castan Broto, ‘Affective Infrastructures,’ in Hesam Kamalipour,  Patricia Aelbrecht and Nastaran Peimani (eds) Routledge Handbook of Urban Design (2023).

My earlier research on ethics and constructive institutional critique was also reconfigured by the chance to engage with the wonderful group at MIARD, (Master Interior Architecture: Research and Design program at Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam, The Netherlands) who kindly invited me to write a preface for Extraction – a trans-scalar inquiry, the inaugural publication in their Spatial Folders series, and by being offered the opportunity to reflect on my ongoing work Silver, after almost a decade, for a stunning collection that investigates the relation of performance and institutional critique, ‘Silver: Self/Site-Writing a Courthouse Drama,’Shauna Janssen, Anja Lindelof and Olav Harslof (eds), Performing Institutions (2023).

I was also really happy to see two sections of my 2010 book Site-Writing re-appearing as part of two fantastic new publications: ‘You tell me’, in the catalogue, for Janane Al-Ani’s solo show, Landmarks, at Ab Anbar Gallery (2023) and ‘She is walking…’ for Tom Jeffreys (ed), Walking, Documents of Contemporary Art, MIT Press/Whitechapel (2024).