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Staff Profile

Dr Martin Beattie

Senior Lecturer

  • Email: martin.beattie@ncl.ac.uk
  • Telephone: +44 (0) 191 208 6032
  • Address: School of Architecture Planning and Landscape
    2nd Floor, The Quadrangle
    University of Newcastle
    Newcastle upon Tyne
    NE1 7RU
Background

Introduction

I initially trained and practiced as an architect, combining practice with teaching architecture from 1996, before being appointed as a full-time lecturer in architecture, in 2001. I was promoted to senior lecturer in 2010.

Ever since first travelling to India in the early 1990s, I have been interested in 'colonial encounters' or meetings between 'east' and 'west.' I am committed to a comparative, heterogeneous approach to histories of art and architecture, and making connections between Avant-guard movements in India and Europe.

Role and Responsibilities

 

Management roles

 

Director of Education (2021/22)

Director of Post-graduate taught courses (2011/12-2014/15 & 2016/17-2020/21)

Acting Director of Architecture (2009/10-2010/11)

 

Admin roles

 

Degree Programme Director MA Urban Design (2021/22-date)

Degree Programme Director and Admissions Tutor MSc Advanced Architectural Design (2018/19-2020/21)

Degree Programme Director and Admissions Tutor MSc Architecture Planning and Landscape (Design) (2016/17-2017/18)

Degree Programme Director and Admissions Tutor BArch (2006/07-2008/09)

 

Teaching roles

 

Year coordinator and studio leader for Stage 2 Architectural Design: ARC2001 (2022/23)

Module leader for Design Studio: ARC8115(2021/22)

Module leader for Housing Alternatives: ARC8069 (2021/22)

Module leader for Design Studio: ARC8115 (2018/19-2020/21)

Module leader for Architecture and Cities Design Studio: ARC8116 (2018/19-2020/21)

Module leader for Design Thesis: ARC8117 (2018/19-2020/21)

Module leader, Architectural Design: ARC8078 (2016/17-2017/18)

Module leader, Design thesis: ARC8079 (2016/17-2017/18)

Module leader, Cities and Buildings: ARC8048(2016-date)

‘Colonial Exchanges’ BA Architecture dissertation elective tutor (2016-date)

Stage 1 year coordinator and module leader for stage 1 architectural design (2011/12-2015/16)

Module Leader, Stage 5 architectural design (2006/07-2008/09)

Module Leader, Stage 2 architectural Design (2002/03-2008/09)

Module leader, Stage 3 construction (2002/03-2008/09)

 

Qualifications

PhD in Architecture, Newcastle University (2005)
MA in Architecture and Critical Theory, Nottingham University (1997)
RIBA Certificate of Professional Practice, Newcastle University (1991)
BArch (Hons.) First Class, Newcastle University (1990)
RIBA Presidents Silver Medal Nomination (1990)
BA (Hons.) in Architectural Studies, Newcastle University (1987)

Previous Positions

Self-employed architect, Newcastle (1999-2001)
Project architect, Alan J. Smith Partnership, Newcastle (1996-1998)
Project architect, Nottingham City Council (1995-1996)
Project architect, Alan J. Smith Partnership, Newcastle (1993-1995)
Graduate architect, John Potter Architect, Newcastle (1991-1992)
Graduate architect, FalknerBrowns, Newcastle (1990-1991)
Architectural assistant, Ellis Williams Partnership, Liverpool (1987-1988)

Memberships

Architects Registration Board

International Association for People-Environment Studies

Fellow of the Higher Education Academy

Research

Research Interests

 

I am an architectural historian investigating the ‘colonial encounter’ in India. More latterly, I have become interested in processes of decolonisation and how to practice history so that it does not continue as another colonial form of knowledge.

 

Essentially my research looks at the way cultures mix (or not as the case may be) and how that process manifests itself in art, architecture, and the city. Between 1999 and 2005, I spent much time in Kolkata, India, researching for my PhD, which used Homi K. Bhabha’s notion of hybridity as an interpretive tool on specific architectural sites of cultural dialogue in Kolkata.

 

My research in cultural hybridity, by its nature, involves multi-focussed, interdisciplinary, comparative work, and is focussed on open-ended analysis of cultural interaction. I have worked in areas such as anthropology, sociology, art, literature, and philosophy. Research methodology for my PhD combined traditional architectural techniques like measured surveys and photography, with more ethnographic methods like participant observation, and semi-structures interviews.

 

Overlapping areas of research interest:

 

  • Entangled histories which emphasise the interconnectedness of cultures and societies
  • Fictional histories, or factual story telling
  • Ideas of (colonial) sovereignty which question the absolute centrality of national borders by highlighting processes of cultural exchange and cross-cultural dialogue
  • The global making, negotiation and recreation of ‘Englishness’ in other places, such as late nineteenth century India
  • Ideas of modernity which emphasise decentered/ coeval/ heterogeneous histories
  • Disruption of fixed bounded categories like "east/west", "primitive/ modern", and “coloniser/ colonised”, in favour of more permeable and fluid identities
  • Postcolonial theory – amongst others, Mikhail Bakhtin, Homi Bhabha and his ideas of hybrid space
  • Translation theory – more specifically Walter Benjamin
  • The myth of the rational city
  • The psychological and political machinations of those who lived off and in empire - the politics of disregard, self-deception, forgetting, anxiety, panic etc.
  • The emotional economies of empire and private feelings of colonisers and how these were managed to avoid disrupting colonial identities – ideas of bewilderment, confusion, being out of control, out of place, beside oneself, and identity loss

Current Projects

 

The Letters and Architectural Writings of John Stapylton Grey Pemberton from Sri Lanka and India

 

I have been writing about the entangled meanings of place, travel and empire in late nineteenth century India, through the "published" and family letters of John Stapylton Grey Pemberton (1861-1940). Pemberton published eight letters, possibly for the Yorkshire Post, covering his travels through Sri Lanka and southern India, a one-month period from the beginning of December 1886 until the beginning of January 1887. Between November 1886 and March 1887, Pemberton also wrote seven letters to his father, Richard Lawrence Pemberton (1831-1901), who was living in Seaham harbour, County Durham, in the North East of England. The family letters form part of a larger collection of forty-nine, written whilst on an 18-month world trip, which also took in South East Asia, Australia, Hong Kong, China, Japan and Canada. These letters are to be found at the Tyne and Wear Archives, Discovery Museum, Newcastle upon Tyne.

 

Lost on the Edges of Empire: John Stapylton Grey Pemberton’s expedition to Darjeeling and the ‘Snowy Ranges’

 

In this account I analyse the emotional life of John Stapylton Grey Pemberton, and an expedition he made with his friend Harry Barton, to Darjeeling and along the Nepalese border, to view Kanchenjunga and Everest, or what were picturesquely referred to as the ‘snowy ranges.’ Pemberton’s trip to Darjeeling and the snowy ranges did not go smoothly, was conducted at a hectic pace, and at the wrong time of year. In the end, he caught only a few glimpses of the mountains ‘owing to the mists.’ A key moment from the trip was when his friend Barton got lost in the jungle and Pemberton appeared uncharacteristically out of control. Although a seemingly insignificant moment, Pemberton’s anxious state of mind highlighted a temporary dissolution of his own identity, and points to the complex space and ambiguities in which colonial travellers lived their lives. In the course of this account, I argue that emotions are produced in relations between and among people, and places.

 

Remaking ‘Englishness’ and Place: John Stapylton Grey Pemberton’s Nineteenth Century Accounts of the Rebellion Sites at Kanpur and Lucknow

 

On or about February 11th and 12th 1887, John Stapylton Grey Pemberton made a trip with his friend Harry Barton, to two major battle sites from the Indian Rebellion of 1857 (or what pejoratively became known as the ‘Indian mutiny.’ These sites were the Memorial Well Gardens, Kanpur, and the Residency ruins, Lucknow, only 48 miles apart, and it is on these places that this account focusses. Both sites, despite being present in a foreign country, were reconstructed after the rebellion in acts of national remembrance ‘as the naturalized containers of an organic “Englishness”’. Both of Pemberton’s accounts at Kanpur and Lucknow highlight how this ‘Englishness’ was invented, transformed, and recovered, in hugely complex spaces.

 

This research project attempts to unsettle the construction of imperial ‘English’ identities as autonomous, settled and natural, which recreates an endless nostalgia for the authority of the traditional and implies a hierarchical ordering and opposition between English identities and the rest. Instead, I highlight the insecurities of English identity, pollute its purity, compromise its autonomy, and begin to explain its displacing possibilities. ‘Englishness’, as I argue, should be understood as an on-going process, which is constructed, maintained, and disrupted ‘by certain auratic, identity-reforming places’. My critical methods, and selection of the accounts of Pemberton in particular, are intended to explore how colonial spaces entered the discourse on ‘Englishness’ in the modern period, and how British colonies functioned as indispensable ingredients in the institution of English identities in specific locales.

 

Uneven Modernities: Rabindranath Tagore and the Bauhaus

 

This research project investigates an art exhibition held in Kolkata, in December 1922, possibly initiated by the Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore. The exhibition included 241 artworks by a diverse group of over 60 nationally and internationally known Indian artists, but also uniquely included 177 artworks by artists from the Bauhaus, in Germany. The majority of Indian artwork was broadly from within the Bengal School style and claimed to represent an ‘authentic’ Indian style of painting, although some artists had begun to engage with European ideas of modernism. Much of the artwork from the Bauhaus emerged from interest in India and the ‘east’ during the first two decades of the twentieth century. The exhibition shows us that the idea of a homogenous ‘western' modernism travelling perfectly formed to the rest of the world must be replaced by a more fragmented, complex picture of disparate and divergent, but entangled and uneven modernities. It also enables us to examine Tagore’s own negotiations with modernity, and whether on his terms the exhibition was a ‘creative unity,’ of ‘east’ and ‘west’.

Future Projects

Entangled Histories of Uneven Modernities: Cross-Cultural Issues and Architecture in Kolkata

The main thrust of my research over the next 5 years is a self-authored, career defining book, on cross-cultural ideas in art and architecture, developed by building up chapters and themes from material generated in previous publications. Taking a transcultural perspective, entangled history deals with transfer, interconnection, and mutual influences across boundaries. It has been fuelled by postcolonial perspectives, by an interest in transnationalism, and by the intellectual consequences of globalisation. Making sense of architectural history in terms of entanglements gives us perspective on our twenty-first century in which impermeable boundaries again seem increasingly less salient than the flows stimulated by global migrations. European and indeed British history is mixed up with other peoples’ histories and is far from being an entirely local affair. Such a view of history is an important step forward towards relativising the hegemonic status enjoyed by historiographical traditions emanating from the west. If this can be translated into historiographical practice, it will amount to a change of paradigm.

The book’s chapters will cover the architectural history of Kolkata from the late 19th century until the present day and will include the following topics:

  1. Introduction: Entangled Histories of Uneven Modernities
  2. Nineteenth Century Attitudes to Health, Hygiene and Modernity in Kolkata
  3. Rabindranath Tagore’s View of Uneven Modernities: the 14th Annual Indian Society of Oriental Art Exhibition, Kolkata, 1922
  4. Architecture and Modernity at the End of Empire: The Garden Theatre and Lighthouse Cinema, Kolkata, 1936-38
  5. Planning and Modernity and the Processes of Decolonisation: American Comprehensive Planning in Kolkata, 1961-66
  6. Hybrid Bazaar Space: Colonialisation, Globalisation and Traditional Space in Barabazaar, Kolkata
  7. Conclusion: Towards a Cross Cultural Theory of Architectural History


Co-creating Assessment Criteria and Rubrics

I am developing an online resource which will explain to students and educators how to co-create assessment criteria and rubrics. During semester 1 2022/23, I have employed two student interns to co-research this project funded by HASS Faculty funds. We will begin by reviewing and analysing the pedagogic literature on the co-creation of assessment criteria and rubrics. Case studies of co-created assessment rubrics for different types of assessment output will be collected to explain the process and methods of co-creation. By Christmas 2022 a report of about 3000 words summarising the literature, and a collection of case studies will be produced as well as a student guide explaining the process and purpose of co-creating assessment criteria to students.

 

During semester 2 2023, I plan to co-create assessment criteria for my module, Reading theory, thinking architecture (ARC8048). Many of the Chinese students who take this module understandably lack much knowledge of the processes of assessment in a UK context and do not actively engage with existing assessment rubrics. These rubrics share complex and detailed academic terminology which is undoubtedly difficult for an international student to follow. A possible way to ensure that these students actively engage with them and can internalize assessment criteria may be by involving then in rubric design and/or their creation.

Esteem Indicators

Editor for Architecture Research Quarterly (Cambridge Journals)

Invited speak at Canadian Cultural Centre, Paris, to launch the book, Narratives Unfolding: National Art Histories in an Unfinished World - November 2017


Funding

Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH UK Trust) 2000
British Academy Grant 2007


Other Expertise

Registered architect

Teaching

I have rich and varied teaching experiences at Newcastle University for 21 years at undergraduate, postgraduate and doctoral level. I have taught in all five years of the two RIBA professionally accredited architecture programmes and more recently on three different PGT programmes. As an interdisciplinary researcher who espouses decolonial and post-colonial approaches, I am a passionate believer in decolonising the curriculum. Current intellectual and cultural currents demand that we revisit these issues. I see its importance as self-evident largely because my research over the last 20 years has investigated the ‘colonial encounter’ in India. I have increasingly been connecting my research to my teaching both in terms of content and in a more collaborative approach to teaching.

Postgraduate Supervision

I welcome PhD and MPhil applicants and would be delighted to discuss projects related to my research.


I am currently acting as supervisor on the following PhD projects:

Sonali Dhanpal, "Living in Princely Cities: Residential Extensions, Bungalow Culture, and the Production of Everyday spaces in Bangalore and Mysore, South India C. 1881-1920" (2019-date)


Under my supervision, the following students have successfully completed their PhD:

Lin Li, "Identity of Urban Spaces in the Changing context of Chinese cities with reference to Shanghai" (2010)

Rittirong Chutapruttikorn, "The Application of Vernacular Knowledge to Housing Design in Thailand" (2011)

Oluwafemi Olajide, "Spatial Analysis of Urban Poverty,  Security of Tenure, Informal Settlements, and Housing Conditions in Lagos Metropolis."

Mabrouk Alsheliby, "The Impact of Socio-economic factors on Urban Identity of the Saudi City Centre. A Case Study: Tabuk city centre." (2015)

Oluwatoyin Akin, "Community Participation and Infrastructure Development: A Case Study of Akure City, Nigeria" (2016)

Xi Chen, "Public Space Making in Wenzhou, China" (2019)


I have acted as an internal examiner on the following PhDs:

Lena Garnesh, "Gender and Spatial Mobility: Zenana, Zoom-out and the Spaces in Between" (2008)

Sumayah al-Solaiman, "The Architectural Discourse of Riyadh: An Interpretive Historical Reading of its Contemporary Architecture" (2010)


I have acted as an external examiner on the following PhDs:

Mark Mukherjee Campbell, "Kolkata: Migrancy, Hybridity, and Dwelling," University of Strathclyde (2015)

Mahroo Moosavi, “Rereading Shaykh Lutfullah Mosque: Intertextuality in the Poetry and Architecture of Safavid Isfahan”, University of Sydney (2019)

Publications