Skip to main content

Staff Profile

Dr Sally Watson

ESRC Postdoctoral Fellow

  • Email: sally.watson@ncl.ac.uk
  • Address: School of Architecture Planning and Landscape
    Henry Daysh Building
    Newcastle University
    Newcastle upon Tyne
    NE1 7RU
Background

I am an interdisciplinary researcher with a background in urban planning and architecture. My research is concerned with the politics of age and citizenship, landscape governance and design, professional knowledge and practice and public participation and activism. Specifically, I am interested in how urban environment professionals have translated different types of knowledge into practice in postwar Britain and how this has privileged some while marginalising others. I am particularly interested in how public space has been designed to support or to deter children's play and mobility in the context of postwar citizen activism and planning for the motor car.


My PhD, titled 'Housing Landscapes and the Politics of Play: From Parker Morris to Byker, c.1955-c.1995', examined the shifting relationship between ideas about children and their play and postwar housing layouts. My current ESRC Fellowship will build on this through researching the design and regulation of public space in 1980s and 1990s housing estates in Newcastle.


Prior to starting my PhD, I worked in museums and architectural collections in Edinburgh, London and Newcastle.

Publications