Goran Vodicka is an architect/urban designer, researcher and educator. He joined the FESTSPACE team in July 2019 as a Research Fellow in the School of Architecture and Cities, University of Westminster. Previously Goran held a lectureship at Sheffield Hallam University and taught at the University of Sheffield. Also, since 2004, he has worked in different types of architecture practices and international organisations (United Nations Development Programme/UNDP, Shelter Centre, Architecture & Développement) and has been involved in initiating projects with local groups and communities.

Goran’s research is broadly focused on urban challenges and is inherently interdisciplinary and boundary-crossing. The main themes of his research could be defined as urban inclusion and diversity (particularly in relation to public space) and socially-engaged design practice and education. His doctoral thesis, Everyday public spaces in an ethnically diverse neighbourhood: contextualised convivialities and boundary-crossing urban design (2018), was completed at the University of Sheffield and focused on exploring intercultural sociability in everyday public spaces through engaged socio-spatial enquiry. Recently he co-authored Ethnographic understandings of ethnically diverse neighbourhoods to inform urban design practice (2018). Part of his research work is related to an on-going initiative, Cities, Languages & Autonomies, which explores the intersections between urban spaces and interlingualism and involves reconceptualising autonomy as a collective and activist construct as argued in Collective autonomy and multilingual spaces in super-diverse urban contexts: Interdisciplinary perspectives (2018).

Recently Goran has also been involved in the DESINC Erasmus+ project looking into practices and pedagogies for designing inclusion. He is an Associate of Architecture Sans Frontières-UK (ASF-UK), a non-profit organisation, which works on the intersection between architecture and community development through the use of action research and participatory design approaches. Also, Goran is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA).