Peeking into Timeless Spaces with Ghost Criminology and Sound Image Echoes.

Recent criminological research has started to use the notion of haunting to explore crime, criminality and punishment. Yet, this research is not about the kinds of spooky goings on that we’ve seen in supernatural film and TV. Instead, it provides us with a way of thinking about the various afterlives of harms that occurred in the past and yet feel very real in the present. And so, we will explore how violent acts can ‘haunt’ locations and how this impacts on our understanding of justice. In this interactive session, we will collectively carry out our own ghost criminology investigation into a location haunted by crime.

Michael Fiddler joined the University of Greenwich in 2006 after completing his PhD on prison architecture. His published research explores the ways in which space, architecture and visual arts combine to inform our understanding of crime and punishment. His current research project has seen him develop the new field of ‘ghost criminology’.

Hadi Bastani and Walter Stabb, members of the University of Greenwich Sound/Image research centre, interrogate the symbiotic relationship between sound, space, social interaction, and sociopolitical contexts in the Brutalist housing complexes of Thamesmead, London and Ekbatan, Tehran. This experimental inquiry explores how auditory and visual media can decode the complex narratives these iconic cultural sites hold, offering a new lens to reimagine how productive, subjective experiences of one place can be transferred to another by way of creative practice and social engagement. How can the confluence of Steven Feld's acoustemology, as a way of knowing the world through sounds and the creative practice of experimental and playful, essayistic film making act as critical tools to map, interpret and intervene in current and future cities?

Walter Stabb is an editor, filmmaker and academic who joined the University of Greenwich in 2016, teaching on the Film and TV Production and Digital Filmmaking courses at undergraduate and postgraduate level. Walter has worked on projects screened by the BBC, HBO America, global advertising agencies, cultural institutions and at festivals internationally.

Hadi Bastani is a visiting researcher at the University of Greenwich conducting research on immersive composition and social change. Designed, developed, and delivered modules in music production/technology, computer-assisted composition, and music anthropology at Queen's University Belfast.