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Staff Profile

Dr Ashley Mason

Research Associate

  • Email: ashley.mason@ncl.ac.uk
  • Address: School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape
    Newcastle University, UK
Background

Ashley Mason is a Research Associate in the School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape at Newcastle University, UK. Her research is engaged with both creative-critical and textual-spatial practices within architecture, though especially with matters of site. Her doctoral thesis in Architecture by Creative Practice, Towards a Paracontextual Practice* (*With Footnotes to 'Parallel of Life and Art') (Newcastle University, 2019), attended to the marginal and ephemeral phenomena of seemingly ‘empty’ sites — whether of extraction, demolition or impact — asking how such peripheral elements might be accounted for and how creative practice inquiry in architecture might be informed by matters usually cast aside, or erased from view. 


Prior experience includes practice in the Netherlands, engagement with a number of architectural community outreach projects in the North East, and as Editorial Assistant for the Cambridge University Press journal arq: Architectural Research Quarterly.


Qualifications

BA (Hons.), MArch (Dist.), PhD by Creative Practice

Research

I am currently working towards the publication of an independently authored book drawing from the outcomes of my doctoral thesis, Towards A Paracontextual Practice* (forthcoming, prospective publication 2023).


Within this publication and additional endeavours, I continue to engage with ephemeral, marginal and threshold phenomena intimately entangled with sites tied to contemporary archival and reparative concerns in both architecture and landscape. My work weaves across disciplines from art to literature and draws from feminist philosophies.


I welcome interest in collaborative projects within, and beyond, these areas.


I have recently been engaged with OpenHeritage, a Research and Innovation Action EU Horizon 2020 multi-partnered project in Organising, Promoting and Enabling Heritage Re-use through Inclusion, Technology, Access, Governance and Empowerment (2018–2022). Led by Loes Veldpaus, John Pendlebury and Martin Hulse (TWBPT). Through Faculty Impact Funding for the project 'Making Space / Keeping Space / Extending Space: Building the Impacts of the Sunderland Cooperative Heritage Lab', we are continuing to develop the impacts and legacy of the Sunderland CHL as a national best practice case study for adaptive heritage reuse. 


I am also the co-editor, with Adam Sharr, of Creative Practice Inquiry in Architecture (Routledge, 2022), an innovative volume exploring emerging forms of creative practice research within architecture. 

Teaching

Over the past ten years, I have contributed to teaching in a variety of roles (as studio tutor, lecturer, seminar leader, co-coordinator, critic) within design and history and theory modules across BA and MArch stages.


Mirroring the interdisciplinary nature of my research, my teaching draws from across disciplinary divides, engaging with activism, art, landscape and literature — with creative-critical and textual-spatial practices, and with matters of site. 


My educational philosophies and practices are feminist — promoting play and collaborative production, reorienting traditional models of critique through ethical and generous conversation i.e. reciprocal learning, confronting power, and attending to marginalised issues and all of the support structures of architecture with care. 


I currently lead, with Sonali Dhanpal, the Stage 3 Design Studio, 'Support Structures | Sunderland'.


Publications