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Staff Profile

Dr James Craig

Senior Lecturer in Architecture

Background

I am a Senior Lecturer in Architecture at Newcastle University, where I teach across architectural design, visual culture, and critical theory. Broadly, my work sits within critical spatial practice, with a particular interest in the relationship between architectural representation, memory and difficult heritage.


My research asks what role architectural representation can play in spaces marked by violence and loss, and how drawing or installation can acknowledge the complexities of places caught in political irresolution. Recent work has focused on the afterlives of conflict in Northern Ireland and Colombia, dealing with issues of contested memory, disappearance and commemoration.


My writing and creative practice have been published in Thresholds, TRACEY, Drawing: Research, Theory, Practice, Architectural Design and Architecture and Culture. I co-authored the 32nd edition of the Pamphlet Architecture series. My drawings and curatorial projects have been exhibited at the Architectural Association, the Royal Academy of Arts, A83 Gallery in New York, Newcastle Contemporary Arts, and Belfast School of Art. In 2026, I curated Aftershocks: The Sensory Afterlives of Violence at Ulster University. My forthcoming book, These Troubled Drawings, will be published by Bloomsbury in 2028.


I welcome PhD enquiries from prospective students interested in any of the following areas: visual culture, creative practice, memory studies, psychoanalysis, and difficult heritage.

Research

My research develops through critical spatial practice, asking how architectural representation can attend to places affected by violence and loss. Difficult heritage is a key concern within this work, particularly where memory is contested and political resolution remains incomplete. I am interested in representational practices that do more than record architectural space. Through drawing, installation and related visual methods, I approach representation as a register of absence: a way of giving visual form to partial histories and thinking through contested spaces.


An important early point of departure for this research was Pamphlet Architecture 32: Resilience, co-authored with Matt Ozga-Lawn and published by Princeton Architectural Press in 2012. Developed in relation to the catastrophic loss of life and urban destruction of the Warsaw Uprising, the project used drawing and installation to think through architecture’s capacity to mark historical trauma. It remains my first sustained commemorative project and established many of the concerns that continue to shape my work: the relationship between representation and loss, the problem of giving visual form to violence, and the role of architectural practice in attending to difficult histories.


Subsequent publications have developed these questions. Articles in Drawing: Research, Theory, Practice, TRACEY, Thresholds, Architectural Design and Architecture and Culture examine the ways in which drawing can register memory, subjectivity, repression, absence and psychic return.


My creative and curatorial work extends these concerns into exhibition contexts. Drawings, installations and related projects have been exhibited at the Architectural Association, the Royal Academy of Arts, A83 Gallery in New York, Newcastle Contemporary Arts and Belfast School of Art.


Much of my recent research has focused on the afterlives of conflict in Northern Ireland. This work considers how architectural drawing and installation practice can engage with the visual and psychological legacies of the Troubles, including questions of memory and the collective unconscious. In 2026, I curated Aftershocks: The Sensory Afterlives of Violence at Ulster University, bringing together artists and researchers concerned with the sensory legacies of conflict. My forthcoming book, These Troubled Drawings, to be published by Bloomsbury in 2028, develops this research through a sustained examination of architectural representation, psychoanalysis and legacies of political violence in Northern Ireland.


A second strand of my current research examines disappearance, search and commemoration in Colombia. Focusing on sites associated with enforced disappearance, this work asks how collaborative drawing might attend to landscapes where violence remains materially concealed and where searching continues in the present. 

Publications