Gimin Lee

Gimin Lee has been doing a PhD in Kent School of Architecture and Planning since September 2015. With her various experiences in volunteering work for the underprivileged, she has been intrigued in understanding local neighbourhoods both architecturally and socioculturally.

She achieved a Bachelor degree (B.Eng in Architectural Engineering) with 1st class honours in Dankook University in South Korea. She started a Graduate diploma programme in Architecture in INTO Newcastle University (2012-2013). During this programme, studying the Byker Wall designed by Ralph Erskine led her to questioning how a deteriorated neighbourhood could be revitalised with retaining its existing character.

This encouraged her to get a Master’s degree in Conservation and Regeneration from the University of Sheffield’s School of Architecture (2013-2014); here she accumulated a wide range of knowledge in terms of heritage conservation and urban regeneration both theoretically and practically. Her master dissertation was entitled, “To what extent should the traditional marketplaces be valued as a sustainable place in town revitalisation?”. This helped her understand the complex issues facing marketplaces today and the potential of the marketplaces in regeneration schemes.

PhD Title

Finding a correlation between heritage conservation and gentrification through interdisciplinary approaches: understanding authenticity of place in traditional marketplaces in London

Gimin Lee is a member of the CREAte research group. Her research is an interdisciplinary work between architecture and sociology to study gentrification and heritage conservation with evaluating authenticity of place in traditional marketplaces in London. She claims traditional marketplaces, which have been changing rapidly, can be an indicator to see the gentrification process and a change of authenticity of place.

Of her particular interest is to analyse methodological limits between two disciplines in terms of studying gentrification and heritage conservation, to use interdisciplinary approaches for better understanding two processes, and to evaluate authenticity of traditional marketplaces in accordance with tangible and intangible forms for historic continuity. In this respect, visual mapping and video-recording work supported by architectural documentation and ethnographic work with an in-depth interview and a questionnaire survey will be used based on a concept of juxtaposition and experiential collage. The combined methodologies from different disciplines in this research will contribute to exploring traditional marketplaces in a more comprehensive manner.

Dr Timothy Brittain-Catlin and Prof. Phil Hubbard (King's College London)