Craig Lyons

Research

PhD title: Producing peripheral space: infrastructure, urban renewal, and social reproduction in Port Kembla, Australia

My PhD project moves between, urban, economic, and political geography to understand how space is produced in urban peripheries and hinterlands in a context of deindustrialisation. Focusing on the 2013 leasing of Port Kembla, the project traces the political-economic and socio-cultural processes that have transformed space in Port Kembla and the Illawarra region. This research will consider the history and development of Port Kembla as an infrastructural asset; rescaling of urban governance with and through infrastructure; the relationships between infrastructure, land, property, and rent; contestations over access to public space; and the reorganisation of social reproduction in a context of deindustrialisation. Focusing on the relationship between the port and the adjacent urban centre, I will also seek to understand how Port Kembla as an economic project produces new, experimental modes of urban and regional governance at the periphery of the global city. 

Publications

Iveson, K., Lyons, C., Clark, S., and Weir, S., (2018), The Informal Australian City, Australian Geographer, 50(1), 11-27

Lyons, C and Crosby, A, (2018) Going on a Field Trip: critical geographical walking tours as urban praxis in Sydney, Australia, M/C Journal, 21(4)

Other academic publications

Gibson, C, Grodach, C, Lyons, C, Crosby, A and Brennan-Horley, C (2017) Made in Marrickville: Enterprise and cluster dynamics at the creative industries- manufacturing interface, Carrington Road precinct. Report DP170104255-2017/02, Australian Research Council Discovery Project: Urban Cultural Policy and the Changing Dynamics of Cultural Production, QUT, University of Wollongong and Monash University.

Non academic publications

Ware, I, and Lyons, C (2016) New Ideas for Old Buildings: Findings of the Creative Spaces and Built Environment Forum. Discussion Paper, March 2016. Sydney: City of Sydney.

Research Funding and Awards

• 2019 – Dorothy R Taylor Award for Best Paper in Australian Geographer
• 2019 – University of Auckland Symposium Grant
• 2019 – 2020, Geographical Society of NSW Writing Retreat Grant
• 2018 – 2021, Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship
• 2018 – Institute of Australian Geographers Postgraduate Grant
• 2018 – 2020, Postgraduate Research Award, University of Wollongong