Luce Beeckmans
Tenured Academic Staff
Contact details and research profile
Biography
Luce Beeckmans is Assistant Professor in Architecture and Urbanism related to Migration and Diversity and senior post-doctoral research fellow funded by the Flanders Research Foundation (FWO). As FWO-postdoc she is affiliated to Ghent University (Department of Architecture and Urban Planning, head institution), KU Leuven University (Interculturalism, Migration and Minorities Research Centre) and Antwerp University (Urban Studies Centre) in Belgium.
Luce Beeckmans graduated as an engineer-architect at Ghent University in 2005. In 2013, she obtained a PhD-degree from the University of Groningen (Groningen Research Institute for the Study of Culture, ICOG) with an award-winning dissertation in which she studied colonial and post-colonial urban development in sub-Saharan Africa. In 2015 she was granted a junior FWO postdoctoral fellowship entitled 'Mapping the Invisible City. Spatial Manifestations of sub-Saharan African Diaspora in the mid-size city in Europe (the case of Belgium)'.
In her current research, she works on the intersection of migration, city and architecture. More specifically, she explores the spatialities and materialities of trans-national migration (in particular from sub-Saharan Africa) with a prime focus on migrants’ and refugees’ housing and home-making. In her research, she applies an interdisciplinary perspective, combining methods and insights from architecture and urban planning, urban ethnography, human geography, migration studies, urban and housing studies, as well as post-colonial studies, de-colonial theory and critical, intersectional and feminist thought. She also researches new ways of data visualisation and deep mapping and coordinated several participatory action researches (for Vluchtelingenwerk Vlaanderen and Globe Aroma). Her most important research topics are urban segregation and encounter; urban agency and citizenship; spatial appropriation and place-making; housing and home-making in displacement; and global religious spatiality. She has published widely and co-curated exhibitions on these topics.
Luce Beeckmans is a supervisor of the FWO-project 'Housing for Refugee Inclusion' (together with Viviana d'Auria, KUL); a project partner and work package leader of/in the HORIZON2020-project 'ReROOT' and the BELSPO-project 'REFUFAM'. At Ghent University, she is the co-president of the board of the Ghent Africa Platform (GAP), a member of the board the Stadsacademie, the Centre for the Social Study of Migration and Refugees (CESSMIR) and the Ghent Centre of Global Studies. She is also the president of the Diversity and Inclusion Committee of the Faculty of Engineering and Architecture.
Outside academia, Luce Beeckmans is a member of the board of CAMPUS ATELIER (‘een open ontwerpatelier voor buurtbewoners van de Gentse stadsbuurt Nieuw Gent en omgeving’) and from September 2021, she will become the president of the board of Collectief Goed (‘een coöperatief woonmodel voor gezinnen met een laag inkomen en/of migratieachtergrond’).
