Meet the new director of the Institute for Urban Futures

“One of the driving questions in all of my work is: to whom does the city belong?” says Shauna Janssen, director of the Institute of Urban Futures (IUF).

Janssen, an assistant professor cross-appointed in the departments of Theatre and Geography, Planning and Environment, will now rally faculty, artists, researchers and graduate students across Montreal around research that explores the complex culture of cities.

“The IUF plays a unique and an essential role in Montreal,” says Janssen.

“There is room here for anyone seeking to engage with possible urban futures – through the histories of cities, through community engagement, the spatial politics of urban change, and research-creation in the arts, culture, media, technology, business, architecture and design.”

‘Her sleeves have been rolled up for years’

Janssen’s experience as a member of the Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Society and Culture Working Group that sowed the seeds for the IUF makes her a good fit as first director, says Rebecca Duclos, Dean of the Faculty of Fine Arts.

“Shauna has been with the Institute for Urban Futures since its inception. When it comes to knowing who is involved in city-based research across this University, she’s one of Concordia’s key people.”

Janssen has spent two years building a large community around the IUF, interviewing dozens of individuals both inside and outside the University.

“She is intensely interested in others’ work, their teaching, and their commitment to the future of urbanity. She asks good questions. She asks hard questions. She’s no armchair theorist: her sleeves have been rolled up for years.”

'Critical, interventionist art and place-based research'

Janssen’s own research considers unplanned for and emergent forms of expressivity in the built environment and the critical role that site responsive performance can play in shaping and framing these experiences.

“My current research in Performative Urbanism, is driven by an ethos for critical, interventionist art and place-based research that engages widespread urban inequalities around gender, race, class, sexuality, ability and intersectional identities in the built environment.”

She also founded Urban Occupations Urbaines in 2008, a research-creation platform for critical, creative, public, and community driven projects that respond to the spatial histories of the built environment.

Focusing on the ‘four A’s'