Visions of Home: The Poetics of Heimat in the Cosmopolitan City

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This interdisciplinary doctoral project will investigate the poetics of Home in contemporary London writing. My central research question is: what visions of home are imagined at a time of neoliberal crisis and cruel gentrification in the city? London's programme of intensive redevelopment over the past twenty years has been turbo-charged by the hyper-commodification of space, which either strips urban places of their meaning or seeks to impose a new one from the top.Using methods of creative non-fiction (such as Jon Day's Homing (2019), for example) to weave together elements of personal biography, storytelling and theory - from literary geography, to topology, architecture and urban design - I examine how stories and poetics re-enchant the places, people and histories that are erased by these large-scale development projects. This re-enchantment reveals an attachment to place that is rooted in the urban fabric and its past; a past that is fought over and at risk. This matters because place provides an essential anchor for the notion of home and belonging.The project engages with the pressing issues of which social actors have the "right to the city" and the right to a Home in the city. Contributing the notion of 'Heimat' as a process of home-making, rather than home-coming, the thesis offers new perspectives on identity and belonging in the globalised, dynamic, post-Brexit city of London.