College of Architecture and Urban Studies | School of Public and International Affairs

Associate Professor, Urban Affairs & Planning Associate Professor, Government and International Affairs   212 Architecture Annex 540-231-1109 ktill@vt.edu

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HONORARY POSITIONS

• Affiliate Faculty in: ASPECT (VT)
• Honorary Research Faculty at the Department of Geography, Royal Holloway, University of London
• Co-Director of the Space & Place Collaborative, University of Minnesota
• Affiliate Member of Land2 creative practice-led research network
• Advisory Board, Urban Laboratory, University College London
  

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ACADEMIC BIOGRAPHY

Education

• Ph.D., University of Wisconsin-Madison, Department of Geography (1996)
• M.A. University of California, Los Angeles, Department of Geography (1991)
• Monash University, Melbourne, Australia, Geography and Art History; University of California Education Abroad Program (1985-1986)
• B.A., University of California, Los Angeles, Department of Geography (1982-4, 1986)

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RESEARCH INTERESTS

• Wounded Cities
• Capital cities in transition
• Cultural politics and national identity: Museums, memorials, monuments
• Place making and social memory
• Public and conceptual urban art and architecture
• New Urbanism, neotraditional town planning and suburbanization
• Qualitative and feminist research methods; Geo-ethnography
• Research areas: Germany, South Africa, United States
  

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SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

Click here for a pdf or Dr. Till's Curriculum Vita.

(*denotes double-blind peer reviewed process)

Single Author Book

• The New Berlin: Memory, Politics, Place (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005) (second printing in 2006).*

Edited volume

• Textures of Place: Rethinking Humanist Geographies, with Paul Adams and Steven Hoelscher (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001). *

Guest-Edited issues:

• “The New Urbanism and Neotraditional Town Planning,” with Karen Falconer Al-Hindi, Urban Geography 23 (3) (2001).*
• “Exploring Transnational Feminist Practice: Heather Merrill’s An Alliance of Women: Immigration and the Politics of Race,” Review Forum Guest editor with Karen Morin, Gender, Place, and Culture 14 (6) (2007): 745-763.

Articles in refereed journals

• “Mapping and Excavating Spectral Traces in post-apartheid Cape Town,” with Julian Jonker, Memory Studies 2 (3) (September, pages forthcoming).*
• “Artistic and Activist Memory-Work: Approaching Place-Based Practice,” Memory Studies 1 (1) (2008): 95-109.*
• “Memory Studies,” History Workshop Journal 62 (2006): 325-341.*“Post-Totalitarian Identity: Public Memory in Germany and Russia,” with Benjamin Forest and Juliet Johnson, Social and Cultural Geography 5(3) (2004): 357-380; part of special issue on “Memory”.*
• “Emplacing Memory through the City: The New Berlin,” German Historical Institute Bulletin 35 (Fall) (2004): 73-83.
• “New Urbanism and Nature: Green Marketing and the Neotraditional Community,” Urban Geography 22 (3) (2001): 220-248; part of special issue on “The New Urbanism”. *
• “(Re)Placing the New Urbanism Debates: Towards an Interdisciplinary Research Agenda,” with Karen Falconer Al-Hindi, Urban Geography 23 (3) (2001): 189-201.
• “Returning home and to the field,” Geographical Review 91 (1-2) (2001): 46-56; part of special issue on “Doing Fieldwork”.*
• “Fragments, Ruins, Artifacts, Torsos,” Historical Geography 29 (2001): 70-73; part of special issue on “Practicing Historical Geography”.
• “Staging the Past: Landscape Designs, Cultural Identity, and Erinnerungspolitik at Berlin’s Neue Wache,” Ecumene 6 (3) (1999): 251-283.*
• “Neotraditional towns and urban villages: The cultural production of a geography of ‘otherness’,” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 11 (1993): 709-732.*

Book chapters in edited volumes

• "Spectral Ground in New Cities: Memorial Cartographies of Cape Town and Berlin," with Julian Jonker, in Memory Culture and the Contemporary City: Building Sites, Eds. Uta Staiger, Henriette Steiner and Andrew Webber (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009) pages forthcoming.*
• "Re/Staging the City: Artistic Urban Encounters," in Monitoring Scenography 2: Space and Truth/Raum und Wahrheit, Ed. Thea Brezik (Zurich: Züricher Hochscule der Künste (ZHdK), forthcoming).*
• “Ethnography and Participant Observation,” with Annette Watson, for Handbook of Qualitative Research in Geography, Edited Mike Crang, Dydia DeLyser, Linda McDowell (London: Sage, forthcoming).
• “Political Landscapes,” for Companion to Cultural Geography, Edited by Nuala Johnson, Rich Schein, James Duncan (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004), 347-364.
• “Construction Sites and Showcases: Tourism, Maps, and Spatial Practices of the New Berlin,” in Mapping Tourism, Stephen Hanna and Vincent Del Casino, eds. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003), 51-78.*
• “Places of Memory,” in A Companion for Political Geography, John Agnew, Katharyne Mitchell, Gearoid O Tuathail, eds. (Oxford: Blackwell, 2003), 289-301.
• “Re-Imagining National Identity: ‘Chapters of Life’ at the German Historical Museum in Berlin,” in Textures of Place: Rethinking Humanist Geographies, Paul Adams, Steven Hoelscher, Karen Till, eds. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 2001), 273-299.*
• “Place in Context: Rethinking Humanist Geographies,” with Paul Adams and Steven Hoelscher, in in Textures of Place, (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001), xiii-xxxiii.*
• “Verortung des Museums: Ein geo-ethnographischer Ansatz zum Verständnis der sozialen Erinnerung” (Placing Museums: A geo-ethnographic approach to social memory) in Geschichtskultur in der zweiten Moderne: Vom  Präsentieren des Vergangenen (Historical Culture in the Second Modern Age), Rosmarie Beier, ed. (Berlin: Campus, 2000), 183-206.

Art Exhibition Catalogue Essays/Creative Published Projects (invited)

• "Mapping Traces: Touring Munich with Stih+Schnock/Kartierung der Spuren: Eine Stadtreise durch Munich mit Stih+Schnock," catalogue essay accompanying Show your Collection conceptual project by artists Renata Stih and Frieder Schnock in R. Stih and F. Schnock, Zeige Deine Sammlung: Jüdische Spuren in München/Show Your Collection: Jewish Traces in Munich (Nuremberg: Verlag für Moderne Kunst, 2008), 16-25.
• “Unresolved Remainders: Memory, photography and place in Judith Tucker’s Tense,” in Tense exhibition catalogue by Judith Tucker, for shows at the Myles Meehan Gallery, Darlington Arts Centre, and Drumcroon Gallery, Lancashire, U.K. (Wild Pansy Press, 2008), 28-31.
• Wall Etchings (2006), photograph/postcard and artistic statement, for “Borderland Postcards: Wish you were here?” curated by Iain Biggs and Sarah Blowen, for SIEF Congress: Transcending ‘European Heritages’: Liberating the Ethnological Imagination, Derry (June, 2008). 

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SELECTED CREATIVE PROJECTS / PUBLIC ARTISTIC PRACTICE

• Design Team, International Landscape Architecture Competition, Pennine Lancashire Squared. Proposal with Coen + Partners (Minneapolis-New York) and Michael Singer Studio for multi-site, collaborative project to develop public spaces, in consultation with town dwellers of Pennine Lancashire, U.K., that create inspirational, civic environments (September 2008).

• International Advisory Board, Berlin, Germany, for “Spuren Suchen” (Searching for Traces), sponsored by the Berlin Citadel historic center (Zitadelle Spandau) with local high school students and international guests (pending funding, scheduled for 2008).

• Guest ‘Tour Guide’ and Speaker in Casket Arts, historic coffin factory, for Skewed Visions site-specific theater group, “In-Focus” post-show discussion series on “Space and Performance,” for Strange Love device/performance,  Minneapolis (October, 2007).

• Space&Place and Land2 Summer Studio: Memory Matters, with Cecilia Aldarondo. Conceptual development of workshops, Minneapolis gallery visits, and works in progress with local, UMN, and international artists and scholars that resulted in new international research and creative projects (July 2007).

• Memory Methodology Workshops, Cape Town, South Africa; Conceptual development of three workshops, in collaboration with District Six Museum staff, South African performance and sound artists, and Cape Town community leaders. Funded by the British Academy and the District Six Museum (2005-06).

• International Advisory Board, Berlin, Germany; Expert advisory member for new memorial museum center (Gedenkstätte) at Berlin-Schöneweide that commemorates and educates the public about the history of forced labor during the National Socialist regime. Invited by the Berlin Senate for Cultural Affairs and Research (2005-06).

• Kennington ArtsLav Advisory Board, London, U.K.; Research, grant writing, and development of community creative space in former underground public toilet (2004-05).

• Invited Speaker, Public Art Competition, Berlin, Germany, for “Die Kunst der Annäherung: Denkzeichen Rosa Luxemburg” part of opening events for competition: “Rosa Luxemburg. Ein Platz. Ein Zeichen. Ein Wochenende der kulturellen Annäherung.” Invited by the Berlin Senate for Cultural Affairs and the Neue Gesellschaft für bildende Kunst Berlin (2003).