Gil Doron has agreed to join the Borders&Territories research group to finalize his PhD research entitled 'The Dead Zone and the Architecture of Transgression'. Doron's research aims to offer a critique of the current professional and theoretical approach to so-callled 'Dead Zone' spaces through developing different urban research methods and writing modes that give a more complex and accurate account of these 'dead' zones. Since the discourse of the 'Dead Zone' and its on-the-ground consequences have many times had devastating implications for already marginalized communities, Doron's research aims to point out the effect of the discourse and highlight the iniquities. The research is making connections between various scales of colonization which uses the same discourse of the 'tabula rasa' and emptiness (i.e. the notion of wilderness in the construction of Palestine as 'empty land' vis-à-vis the notion of the 'void' in urban marginal areas. Furthermore, the research offers a toolbox of methodologies for researching such complex spaces, as well as writing about them. It also suggests that the mode of writing developed here can be applied to other urban spaces and issues and in non-academic setting (i.e. reviews of urban spaces by local planning departments, the process of resident participation in neighborhoods renewal etc.). Doron's research is scheduled to be completed in June 2014.
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