Michal Huss

Michal Huss is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow and Lecturer in Architectural Studies at the University of Manchester, researching the built environment of post/colonial and divided cities through architectural and political theory lenses. Her work examines how spaces facilitate daily life, rituals, and resistance against colonial and capitalist legacies.

She earned her PhD in Architecture from the University of Cambridge (2017–2021, awarded 2022) under ESRC sponsorship, with her thesis Walking in Landscapes of Displacement: The Spatiality of Transcultural Activism forming the basis of her forthcoming monograph Refugees, Urban Belonging and the Transgressive Art of Walking (Amsterdam University Press, 2025).

Huss employs participatory 'walk-along' ethnography, archival research, and artistic methods to study housing, ruins, cemeteries, and urban ghost stories across South Asia and the Middle East. Her research redefines urban knowledge by centering everyday spaces of living and dying on geographical margins, highlighting multidirectional spatial practices and acts of repair.

Her 12 recent publications reveal a cohesive trajectory from mapping occupation (2015–2019) to analyzing contemporary struggles over Muslim cemeteries (2024) and the transgressive potential of walking in divided cities (2022–2025), consistently engaging with spatial justice, memory activism, and resistance.

Her scientific recognition includes:

• Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship supporting her current project on everyday spaces of living and dying

Huss supervises PhD students and secures research funding through competitive fellowships, with her Leverhulme project examining spatial struggles on urban margins. Her methodology inherently involves community collaboration in field sites, though formal lab affiliations aren't specified.