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Department of Architecture, University of Cambridge
1-5 Scroope Terrace, Cambridge CB2 1PX, UK
Anita Bakshi
Educational Background and Experience:
Anita Bakshi received her BA degree in architecture from the University of Illinois at Chicago, and a Master of Architecture degree from the University of California at Berkeley. She has worked in architectural design firms in Berkeley, Chicago, and Istanbul as well as researched architectural heritage in Berlin and Cappadocia, Turkey. She is currently working towards a PhD in Architecture at the University of Cambridge within the context of the Conflict in Cities Research Programme. Her PhD research on Cyprus and the nature of urban memory in the divided capital of Nicosia focuses on the city’s Venetian Walls and the United Nations Buffer Zone as symbolic locations in the Cypriot imagination, and as a prime example of the manner in which the Cyprus Conflict is remembered and forgotten. Current research interests include memory and history in the context of divided cities, the politicization of heritage, and nationalism and urban design in the politics of planning.
Working Title of Thesis:
Urban Memory in Divided Nicosia.
Abstract/Main Argument/Field of Enquiry:
With the division of Nicosia, places in the city were radically transformed by the conflict and this, in turn, resulted in the disruption of the relationship between place and memory. Over the last several decades this disruption and loss has given rise to the development of memories of the united city that once was, and imagined constructions of the lost part of the city, on the other side of a border that was inviolable. This dissertation seeks to explore the nature of urban memory in Nicosia - attempting to draw out the dynamics of memory related to place in contested and divided cities. This dissertation focuses on the Buffer Zone and the city’s Venetian Walls in order to examine official constructions of history, memory and myth, as well as personal and intergenerational memories related to these sites.
Contact email address: ab786@cam.ac.uk
Other Activities
Anita serves as a supervisor for the BA Tripos (ARB/RIBA Part I) Gardens and Landscape Course.
Anita is currently one of the conveners of the City Seminar at CRASSH – The Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences, and Humanities. This seminar aims to further an understanding of the specificity of the urban condition and how it is articulated culturally, economically, socially, and politically.
http://www.crassh.cam.ac.uk/page/389/city-seminar-.htm
Anita recently exhibited a work entitled “Nicosia – Layers of Absence and Presence” at the Nicosia Home for Cooperation inauguration exhibition “Artists at the H4C – tales, rumours, frictions, reflections” in May 2011. More details about the Home for Cooperation inauguration and images of the exhibit can be seen by following the link below :
Nicosia: Layers of presence and absence
Home for Cooperation Inauguration Flyer
A Nicosia Web Report by Anita Bakshi can be viewed by following the link below:
The Home for Cooperation Opens in Nicosia’s Buffer Zone
Publications
Bakshi, A. 2011. 'Memory and Place in Divided Nicosia', Spectrum Journal of
Global Studies 3 (4): 27-40.
Recent presentations include:
“Trade and Exchange in Nicosia’s Shared Realm – Ermou Street in the 1940s and 1950s.” at the Shared Spaces and their Dissolution: Practices of Coexistence in Cyprus and Elsewhere conference at the Home for Cooperation, Nicosia. October 2011.
“A Resource of Memory – Researching Nicosia’s Buffer Zone” at the City Seminar Workshop on Urban Research at Cambridge, CRASSH The Centre for the Arts, Social Sciences, and Humanities, University of Cambridge. May 2011.
“Nicosia’s Buffer Zone – Topographies of Memory” at the International Praxis Conference on Cultural Memory and Coexistence, Fatih University, Istanbul. March 2011
“Heritage, Myth and Nation Building – Nicosia and other Contested Cities” at the PRIO Cyprus Centre conference, Conflicts and Values of Heritage: The Cyprus Case and Beyond, Nicoisa. November 2010.
“Divided Cities – Mythologies of Place and Nostalgic Utopias” at the conference, Once Upon a Place: Haunted Houses and Imaginary Cities, Technical University of Lisbon. October 2010.
“Memory and Place in Nicosia: The Cyprus Conflict and the Walled City as a Site of Memory and Oblivion” at the conference on The Mediterranean in the World System: Structures and Processes, METU, Northern Cyprus Campus. May 2010.
“Divided Nicosia’s Walled City – A Shell of Memory” presented at the Eleventh Berlin Roundtables of Transnationality - Memory Politics, Humboldt University and the Social Science Reseach Center, Berlin. October 2009.
“Divided Nicosia – Bridging Memory and History,” at the International PhD Seminar: Urbanism & Urbanization, Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium. October 2009.
“Divided Memory and Architecture in Nicosia” at the PRIO Cyprus Centre conference, One Island, Many Histories: Rethinking the Politics of the Past in Cyprus, Nicosia. November 2008.
PhD students:
Anita Bakshi
Architecture, University of Cambridge (Nicosia)
Giulia Carabelli
Sociology, Queens University Belfast (Mostar)
Monika Halkort
Sociology, Queens University Belfast (Nahr el Bared refugee camp, Tripoli, Lebanon)
Konstantin Kastrissianakis
Architecture, University of Cambridge (Beirut)
Karl O'Connor
Politics, University of Exeter (Brussels, Nicosia and Beirut)
Linda Rootamm
Sociology, Queens University Belfast (Berlin)
Kelsey Shanks
Politics, University of Exeter (Kirkuk)
Affiliated Graduates
Annie Kane-Horrigan
Sociology, Queens University Belfast (Belfast)
Brendan Browne
Sociology, Queens University Belfast (Ramallah/Belfast)