The Urban Surfaces Research Network (USRN) is an international multi-disciplinary group of scholars, artists, and practitioners interested in the roles of surfaces as spaces of urban communication, governance, and political contestation. We explore how surfaces are designed, managed, valued, and contested as public assets, to enrich the diversity of public expression in global cities.

I started this project in 2023 with Kostas Avramidis and Tom Ward. Since then, we held six online workshops and published an open-access booklet from each of them; and organised urban-surface related sessions at the Royal Geographical Society conference in London 2024, and the Society of Architectural Historians conference in Atlanta in 2025. The network was awarded an Urban Studies Foundation Seminar Series Award for the project “Walls speak. Are you listening? A research agenda for urban surfaces”, taking place in 2025-26. We currently have 85 members from 23 countries.

Andron, S., Avramidis, K., Ward, T. (2024). ‘Urban Surfaces Research Network Vol. 1’. Melbourne Centre for Cities, University of Melbourne.

Andron, S., Avramidis, K., Ward, T. (2024). ‘Urban Surfaces Research Network Vol. 2’. Melbourne Centre for Cities, University of Melbourne.

Andron, S., Avramidis, K., Ward, T. (2024). ‘Urban Surfaces Research Network Vol. 3’. Melbourne Centre for Cities, University of Melbourne.

Andron, S., Avramidis, K., Ward, T. (2025). ‘Urban Surfaces Research Network Vol. 4’. Melbourne Centre for Cities, University of Melbourne.

Andron, S., Avramidis, K., Ward, T. (2025). ‘Urban Surfaces Research Network Vol. 5’. Melbourne Centre for Cities, University of Melbourne.

Andron, S., Avramidis, K., Ward, T. (2025). ‘Urban Surfaces Research Network Vol. 6’. Melbourne Centre for Cities, University of Melbourne.

Activities

Graffiti, posters, and visual governance in the city research workshop

3 – 4 December 2025
The University of Melbourne, Parkville

How are urban surfaces used for communication, governance, and political contestation in cities? And how are they designed, managed, valued, and contested as public assets?

This workshop brought together 18 academics, policy makers, and creative practitioners from Australia and New Zealand to develop a research agenda for urban surfaces, focused on the following themes: governance, labour, materiality, economy, and communication.

Drawing on the mandate of the Urban Surfaces Research Network, the workshop established awareness of the multiple research agendas that operate with urban surfaces, to foreground surfaces as a central research concept and field of study pertinent to numerous political, legal, social, architectural, and cultural concerns.

Participants:

Adrian Tanner, graffiti removal officer, Melbourne inner city council
Alison Barnes, senior lecturer in design and place, Western Sydney University
Asees Prab, design practitioner, RMIT University
Caroline Kyi, specialist wall painting conservator, University of Melbourne
Cecilia Brazioli, PhD candidate in sociology, University of Milan
Chris Parkinson, artist and lecturer, University of Melbourne and Yarra City Council
Enzo Lara Hamilton, artist and researcher, University of Melbourne
Kostas Avramidis, Assistant Professor in architecture, University of Cyprus
Kurt Iveson, Professor of urban geography, University of Sydney
Laura Szyman, design-research practitioner, RMIT University
Lucy Irvine, artist and researcher, Australian National University
Maria Noriega, urban planner, University of Melbourne
Martin Abbott, architect, University of Sydney
Michael Stonham, lecturer in architecture and graffiti writer, University of New South Wales
Myra Abubakar, researcher in visual governance in Southeast Asia, Australian National University
Nataly Arevalo, community safety practitioner, Darebin City Council
Nazanin Moghaddam, independent muralist
Sabina Andron, Research Fellow in cities and urbanism, University of Melbourne
Tom Ward, PhD candidate in human geography, Uppsala University
Young-Tack Oh, spatial practitioner, Archipleasure

It is the first of three events in the Urban Studies Foundation seminar series “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.