Athena Lecture Series - Jane Margaret Jacobs

Professor Jane M Jacobs’ research is in the field of urban studies, with a particular interest in cultural aspects of the production and consumption of the built environment. This includes research on the politics of heritage, the production and consumption of high-rise living, and professional cultures of city building (including architecture, planning and engineering). She works with a commitment to comparative and postcolonial frameworks, and with a qualitative and interpretative toolkit. Her urban studies publications include Edge of Empire: Postcolonialism and the City (1996), Cities of Difference (1998), and Buildings Must Die: A Perverse View of Architecture (2014). She has also published many peer review papers in journals and edited collections.

Prof Jacobs manages the pleasant confusion of sharing her name with the influential, but now deceased, urbanist Jane Jacobs, who authored the book Death and Life of Great American Cities. Because of this, she has become an expert in professional disambiguation.