STAFF PROFILE
Professor Quentin Stevens
Position:
Professor
College / Portfolio:
Design and Social Context
School / Department:
DSC|School of AUD
Phone:
+61399258361
Email:
quentin.stevens@rmit.edu.au
Campus:
City Campus
Contact me about:
Research supervision
Dr Stevens is a full-time researcher in urban design, with strong transdisciplinary links to landscape architecture, public art, urban planning, urban geography, sociology and history. His particular research interests are people’s perception and behaviour in urban open spaces, commemorative landscapes, and urban waterfronts. His work has been funded by major competitive grants from the Australian Research Council, Germany’s Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Taiwan’s Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation, the Academy of Korean Studies and the British Academy. He has previously taught and researched at Humboldt University Berlin, University College London and the University of Queensland. He holds professional degrees in architecture and urban planning and completed his PhD in urban design in 2002.
Dr Stevens has delivered over fifty invited lectures in twelve countries, including numerous conference keynotes, the majority of which were to audiences in other disciplines, particularly public art, digital media, and urban sociology. He has published eight books with leading international academic publisher Routledge, 25 additional book chapters, and almost sixty peer-reviewed papers. This includes interdisciplinary co-authoring with 30 collaborators across Architecture, Urban Planning, Public Art, Game Design, Geography, Sociology, and Environmental Psychology.
Dr Stevens is also a peer reviewer for fifty leading international journals across the disciplines of Architecture, Urban Planning, Urban Design, Urban Geography, and Public Art. He has field research experience in Germany, Britain, the United States, Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Malaysia, France, Canada, Mexico and Hungary.
View Quentin Stevens’s publications on Google Scholar, ResearchGate and ORCID.
Dr Stevens has delivered over fifty invited lectures in twelve countries, including numerous conference keynotes, the majority of which were to audiences in other disciplines, particularly public art, digital media, and urban sociology. He has published eight books with leading international academic publisher Routledge, 25 additional book chapters, and almost sixty peer-reviewed papers. This includes interdisciplinary co-authoring with 30 collaborators across Architecture, Urban Planning, Public Art, Game Design, Geography, Sociology, and Environmental Psychology.
Dr Stevens is also a peer reviewer for fifty leading international journals across the disciplines of Architecture, Urban Planning, Urban Design, Urban Geography, and Public Art. He has field research experience in Germany, Britain, the United States, Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Malaysia, France, Canada, Mexico and Hungary.
View Quentin Stevens’s publications on Google Scholar, ResearchGate and ORCID.
Conference Keynote Lectures
- 2020 ‘Urban Play: A Dialogue Between People And Environments’, Performing the City Symposium. Sydney College of the Arts, University of Sydney
- 2019 ‘Monument-Led Urbanization from the Renaissance to Chongqing’, Annual conference of the Academic Committee for Planning History and Theory, Urban Planning Society of China, Lanzhou, China
- 2016 ‘Memorials as Spaces of Engagement’, Conference Memory of Space – Spaces of Memory: Contemporary Memorial Design, Academy of Fine Arts, Krakow, Poland
- 2015 ‘Acting in public: scripts, habits and improvisations’, Conference Fresh Eyes on Urban Space, Aarhus Center for Visual Art, Denmark
- 2012 ’The How and Where of Play’, Seminar The Ludic City: urban practices through a playful lens, Free University Brussels, Belgium
- 2009 ’Liminality and Sense of Place’, Conference Motion and Emotion within Place, Aarhus University, Denmark
- 2008 ’What are public spaces for? – Play and the role of planning’, Seminar in Urban Sociology, Technical University of Vienna, Austria
- 2008 ’What are public spaces for? - Play, tactics and the role of planning’, Urban Studies Days, Estonian Academy of Arts, Tallinn, Estonia
- 2008 ’Playing with the potential of public spaces’, seminar Playing in Urban Places, Gallery & Studio Theatre, Leeds Metropolitan University UK
Peer Review Experience
- Editorial Board member, Urban Design International (since 2009)
- Editorial Board member, Journal of Urban Design (since 2016)
- Referee for 48 other journals across several disciplines:
Urban Planning and Design:
Environment and Planning A, Environment and Planning B, Environment and Planning C, Urban Studies, Town Planning Review, Planning Theory, Planning Theory and Practice, Planning Practice and Research, Australian Planner, Urban Policy and Research, European Planning Studies, International Planning Studies, Land Use Policy, Planning Perspectives, Progress in Planning, Journal of Planning History, Journal of Urban History, Journal of Urbanism, Urban Planning and Design, City, Cities, Journal of Urban Affairs, Habitat International
Architecture and Landscape Architecture:
Journal of Architecture, Architectural Theory Review, OASE architectural journal, Interstices, Landscape Research, Landscape Journal, Journal of Landscape Architecture
Urban Geography:
International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Antipode, Area, Urban Geography, Progress in Human Geography, Geografiska Annaler B: Human Geography, Geographical Research, Geography Compass, Bulletin of Geography, Space and Culture, Emotion Space and Society
Art:
Public Art Dialogue, Social Dynamics
Interdisciplinary:
Memory Studies, International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction, International Journal of Play, The London Journal, Public Health
- Reviewer for book proposals: Routledge, MIT Press, Palgrave McMillan, Ashgate, Polity Press
- Reviewer for research grant proposals and research assessment exercises:
European Research Council 2020
Swiss National Science Foundation 2020
Australian Research Council - since 2016 - Discovery, Linkage, Future Fellowship and DECRA programs and ERA 2015
Leverhulme Trust (UK) 2014
Arts and Humanities Research Council (UK) 2011
German Research Council (DFG) 2011
Promotion case, King Fahd University, Saudi Arabia 2019
Research Awards and Fellowships
- 2019 RMIT Award for Research Excellence in Design
- 2013 RMIT College of Design and Social Context Research Award
- 2019 Visiting Researcher, School of Geography and Planning, Cardiff University, UK
- 2016 Visiting Researcher, Institute for Sociology, Technical University Berlin, Germany
- 2013 Visiting Research Fellow, Humanities Research Centre, Australian National University
- 2010–2014 ARC Future Fellowship, What is successful public art today? Exploring how contemporary public art and memorial design shapes public engagement, perceptions and behaviour. $686,000
- 2009–2012 Senior Research Fellowship, Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Germany, The beach on top of the pavement: the evolution of Germany’s ’city beaches’. €78,300
- PhD University of Melbourne (Urban Design) 2002
- MUPP University of Illinois at Chicago 1995
- BArch(Hons1) University of Melbourne 1993
- BPD(Arch) University of Melbourne 1990
- 2004–2005 Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (UK), Monitoring and evaluation of the design coding programme (with M. Carmona, R. Blum, L. Hammond & Tibbalds Urban Design).
- 2004 Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (UK), The development and use of design codes in England (with M. Carmona, S. Marshall & Tibbalds Urban Design).
- Member Planning Institute of Australia since 2002
- Roland, S.,Stevens, Q.,Simon, K. (2024). The Uncanny Capital: Mapping the Historical Spatial Evolution of Windhoek In: Urban Forum, 35, 121 - 145
- Stevens, Q. (2024). Designing for possibility in public space: affordance, assemblage, and ANT In: Urban Design International, , 1 - 11
- Stevens, Q.,Thai, H. (2024). Mapping the character of urban districts: The morphology, land use and visual character of Chinatowns In: Cities, 148, 1 - 18
- Amati, M.,Stevens, Q.,Rueda, S. (2023). Taking Play Seriously in Urban Design: The Evolution of Barcelona’s Superblocks In: Space and Culture, , 1 - 16
- Stevens, Q. (2023). City Beaches: Enlivening Marginal Spaces in Germany In: Routledge Handbook of Urban Public Space, Taylor & Francis, United States
- Stevens, Q.,Leorke, D.,Thai, H.,Innocent, T.,Tolentino, C. (2023). Playful portable pliable interventions into street spaces deploying a playful parklet across Melbourne's suburbs In: Journal of Urban Design, , 1 - 21
- Stevens, Q. (2023). Discovering the playful affordances of urban spaces In: The Routledge Handbook of Urban Design Research Methods, Routledge, New York, USA
- Aelbrecht, P.,Stevens, Q. (2023). Geographies of Encounter, Public Space, and Social Cohesion: Reviewing Knowledge at the Intersection of Social Sciences and Built Environment Disciplines In: Urban Planning, 8, 63 - 76
- Zhu, J.,Stevens, Q.,Anderson, C. (2022). Chinese Public Memorials: under the Effect of Pursuing Radically Solemnness, Sacredness, and Grandness In: Proceedings of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand (SAHANZ) 38 Ultra: Positions and Polarities Beyond Crisis, Adelaide, South Australia, 10/11/2021-13/11/2021
- Roland, S.,Stevens, Q. (2022). North Korean Aesthetics within a Colonial Urban Form: Monuments to Independence and Democracy in Windhoek, Namibia In: PROCEEDINGS OF THE SOCIETY OF ARCHITECTURAL HISTORIANS, AUSTRALIA AND NEW ZEALAND (SAHANZ) VOLUME 39, Auckland, New Zealand, 25-27 November 2022
- Korean diasporic place-making in Vietnam. Funded by: Academy of Korean Studies Grant from (2024 to 2025)
- Play about Place: Expanding the impact of Creative Placemaking after COVID. Funded by: ARC-Linkage Project from (2023 to 2026)
- Urban Commons: co-creating place with young people through creative play. Funded by: Victorian Health Promotion Foundation - JumpStart! Grant from (2023 to 2024)
- Inclusive memories: tracing democratic practices in contemporary memorials. Funded by: ARC Discovery Projects commencing in 2022 from (2022 to 2025)
- The role of North Korea’s Mansudae Overseas Projects in transforming the spaces and political symbolism of African capital cities. Funded by: Academy of Korean Studies Grant From 2016 from (2022 to 2023)
Note: Supervision projects since 2004
6 PhD Current Supervisions7 PhD Completions
Urban design; Design and analysis of public spaces; Perception and behaviour in urban spaces; Temporary and informal interventions in urban spaces; Memorials and public art; Policy and management for public spaces; waterfronts; Chinatowns.