This web site contains a selection of past and present writings, supported by picture galleries, videos and other material generated by my research. I am an urban ethnographer by trade and have worked mostly with young people and communities in East London, charting the impact of structural and demographic change on their everyday experience, and the stories they tell about the past, present and future of this area. My work draws on concepts and methods from a range of approaches in the human sciences, including anthropology, actor-network theory, psychoanalysis, narratology and cultural geography. I have always been concerned to relate my
research to educational and political issues, and to create a dialogic framework for the research process.
Please feel free to contact me using this link or the Contact Phil link above.
Phil now has a Wikipedia entry! Click here to view it.
My New Book!
Three years in the making, this book is an experiment in close collaboration between a writer and four visual artists who together take a stab at capturing the zeitgeist from Left Field. This is no prophecy of Doom or New Dawn but a groundling’s view of the theatre of cruelty which currently passes for everyday life, and some pointers to what might lead us into a better social dance, for the enjoyment of the many, not the precious few. The book takes the form of three notebooks which explore different aspects of our once and future time, with the text being visually notated in full colour double page spreads.
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The book is available from Eyeglass Books.
My Previous Book
New Directions in Radical Cartography
Why the Map is Never the Territory
EDITED BY PHIL COHEN AND MIKE DUGGAN
New Directions in Radical Cartography looks at the contemporary debates about the role of maps in society. It explores the emergence of counter-mapping as a distinctive field of practice, and the impact that digital mapping technologies have had on cartographic practice and theory. It includes original research, accounts of mapping projects and detailed readings of maps. The contributors explore how digital mapping technologies have sponsored a new wave of practices that seek to challenge the power that maps are commonly assumed to have. They document the continued vitality of analogue maps in the hands of artists and activists who are pushing the boundaries of what is mappable in different ways. New Directions in Radical Cartography draws on a rich body of mapping work that exists as part of community action, urban ethnography, environmental activism, humanitarianism, and public engagement.
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Rowman & Littlefield Publishers / Rowman & Littlefield International
I would like to acknowledge those who have been essential to the creation of this website: Norman Dallura (Dallura Web Design), Donald Nicholson Smith (editorial consultant) and Jane Mullins (copy editing).
