Research

What does “home” mean in a city like London? Rather than understanding home as a single place or stable condition, the project explores three interconnected dimensions – public, private and intangible home.​ Through these dimensions, the research approaches home as fluid, relational and continually changing – shaped by belonging, security, everyday routines, attachment, migration, loss and displacement.

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Process

The project developed through a long-term collaboration with five Londoners of different generations and cultural backgrounds. The process began online during the pandemic through a series of conversations and virtual walks using Google Maps. It later moved into London’s neighbourhoods and homes through filmed walks, home tours and observational encounters. The participants were invited to actively shape the process and meaning of the film. I also included my own changing relationship with home, gradually moving from observer to participant and eventually welcoming each of them into my own space.

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Practice

The feature documentary The Dying Fox Turns Its Head to Home follows the intertwined journeys of Andre, Caroline, Zinovy, Emilie and Maria as they reflect on what home has meant throughout their lives. Alongside their stories, the film traces my own search for belonging and my changing relationship with London. As the collaboration develops, the film moves between public, private and imagined homes, blurring the boundaries between documentary observation, participation and personal reflection.

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Thesis

The written thesis examines how home can be understood as a fluid, relational and multi-scalar experience. It also reflects on the possibilities and tensions of participatory documentary filmmaking, the position of the filmmaker-researcher and the role of creative practice in producing knowledge.

 

Selected Presentations

The research and work-in-progress film were presented at:

• Home Frames: Politics, Poetics and Place, Queen’s University Belfast (June 2026)

• Refugees and Participatory Approaches: Bridging Narratives Through Research and Art Symposium (April 2025)

• Czechoslovak Society of Arts and Sciences meeting in London (February 2024)

• London Calling! (September 2023 and September 2024)

• Royal Anthropological Institute Film Festival, Work in Progress session (March 2023)

• Anthropology of Home, UCL and Open City Documentary Festival (Autumn 2022, Spring 2023 and Spring 2025), led by Dr Barbara Knorpp

• Good City: Conference on Urbanism, Kent School of Architecture (October 2022)

• Connections, PGR School of Arts Conference, University of Kent (June 2022)

• NonConference, PGR School of Arts event, University of Kent (June 2021)

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Support

The research and creation of the project were supported by:

• Vice-Chancellor’s Scholarship at the University of Kent

• Migration and Movement Fund

• Arts and Humanities Postgraduate Research Fund

• Research Training Support Grant through UK Research and Innovation

• Graduate and Researcher College PhD Top-Up Fund

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