Donagh Horgan
. Senior Researcher:
Dr. Donagh Horgan is an interdisciplinary designer, consultant and academic researcher working on sustainable urban environments to support social innovation and democratic exchange.
Bas is Associate Professor in Urban Geography at the Department of Human Geography and Spatial Planning at Utrecht University.
His research focuses on the nexus between urban consumption, retailing and public space – with specific interests in city centre competition, retail development, touristification and commercial gentrification, urban tourism, (cross-border) leisure shopping, walking mobilities, and encounters with difference. He analyses how urban competition for mobile consumers and consumption capital increasingly commercialises public space, and what that implies for practices and experiences of various social groups – i.e. for processes of social interaction, differentiation, and inclusion and exclusion in particular.
Combining qualitative and quantitative methods – with specific interests in qualitative participatory and visual methods, including go-alongs, mental mapping and photovoice – his research develops around the following interrelated themes.
Urban tourism and commercial gentrification
Consumption spaces and everyday mobilities
Differentiation processes and public space
