Associate Professor Nicole Kalms
Nicole Kalms is an Associate Professor in the Department of Design and founding director of the Monash University XYX Lab which leads national and international research in Gender and Place. In this role, Dr Kalms is leading two significant research projects Urban Exposure: Interactively Mapping the Systems of Sexual Violence in Cites and Women and Girls Only: Understanding the Spaces of Sexual Harassment in Public Transport. These projects are in partnership with state, national and international stakeholders.
Nicole has a PhD in Architecture from Monash University. She obtained her Bachelor Degree in Architecture from RMIT and practiced architecture for several years before undertaking a Masters degree in Landscape Architecture (RMIT). Nicole is currently a full-time member of Monash University’s Faculty Art, Design and Architecture where she is focused on cross-disciplinary research.
Dr Kalms’ recent contributions include the monograph Hypersexual City: The Provocation of Soft-Core Urbanism (Routledge 2017) examining sexualized representation and precincts in neoliberal cities. Her forthcoming monograph She City: A Design Handbook for Challenging Women’s Inequity in Cities (Bloomsbury) will draw on interdisciplinary research and case studies from gender scholars, design practitioners, and feminist activists to update the significant research on gender and the city.
The innovation of Kalms’ research is the examination of digital, experiential, political and material interventions collated to articulate both the shared and conflicted struggles of women and girls internationally. Her praxis repositions design as a strategic tool for challenging gender inequity.
Other research includes ‘Urban exposure: Feminist crowd-mapping and the new urban imaginary’ in the Routledge Companion to Urban Imaginaries (2018), ‘I’m Here’: Identity and Obscurity in Locative Safety Technology for Women in Neo-Liberal Cities’ (2017) in the edited book series Critiques, ‘Hypersexual Occupations’ (2015) in the edited book Occupation: Ruin, Repudiation and Revolution and ‘Hypersexual Transgressions’ (2014) published in the Architectural Humanities Research Association’s journal Architecture and Culture.
Dr Kalms regularly writes for a diverse non-academic audience, and is frequently invited to speak to the public about gender, sexuality and urban space at major national and international cultural institutions. Kalms has been interviewed on BBC World TV (2018) and France 24 TV (2019). Kalms was the keynote speaker at the Planning Institute of Australia Congress (2019) and the Autonomy Mobility Summit in Paris (2019).
Recent news
‘Yours, mine, ours’ wins Good Design Award Gold Accolade in Australia’s International Good Design Awards
The winners of Australia’s peak international design awards – the highest honour for design and innovation in the country were announced today during the 2020 Good Design Week.
9 Sep 2020
What does the ‘new normal’ look like for women’s safety in cities?
Women’s safety in public space is very complex. Women’s perception of safety – as opposed to their risk of experiencing gendered violence or crime – very much determines how they interact with public space. This issue of perception makes measuring and evaluating women’s experiences difficult.
16 Jul 2020
Graduate research opportunities
We look favourably on applications to study a graduate research degree that align with our research labs, focus areas, and the expertise of our supervisors, and encourage you to explore the list of opportunities below.
Gender and crime in cities
Urban designers, architects and planners have key roles in making safe and inclusive places, with urban safety guidelines and crime prevention tactics foundational to safe environments. The XYX Lab are looking for projects that reduce the risks of spatial inequality in communities.
- Scholarship may be available
- Open call
- Supervisors: Associate Professor Nicole Kalms and Dr Gill Matthewson
- Undertaken within: XYX Lab – Gender + Place
Gender and night-time economies
The XYX Lab is seeking proposals that examine the confluence of factors that contribute to gendered experiences of the night-time economy – both in spatial design and visual communication design – and the role they play as a cultural and social practice that can contribute to challenging power relations within cities, and consequently to women’s feelings of safety within them.
- Scholarship may be available
- Open call
- Supervisors: Associate Professor Nicole Kalms, Dr Gill Matthewson, Associate Professor Gene Bawden and Jess Berry
- Undertaken within: XYX Lab – Gender + Place
Mapping gender in cities
Geolocative mapping has become a useful way to create and share content, and to shed light on hidden experiences in cities. While digital technologies are implicated in public surveillance, there are opportunities to use social media to shape the everyday practices of urban life. The capacity for geolocative to be deployed as a valid design research method has been underestimated. A strong PhD proposal will advance knowledge of the social inequity of women, gender-diverse and/or other marginalised groups using innovative methods.
- Scholarship may be available
- Open call
- Supervisors: Associate Professor Nicole Kalms and Dr Gill Matthewson
- Undertaken within: XYX Lab – Gender + Place
Women and housing
The XYX Lab seeks PhD proposal across the broad theme of 'Women and Housing' with the aim to expand the understanding of spaces for women, by women and the significance of gender in designing for women. The PhD proposal will focus on the crisis of accommodation for women in Australia and the scale of domestic abuse faced by women, and well as broad issues of women's safety and security.
- Scholarship may be available
- Open call
- Supervisors: Associate Professor Nicole Kalms and Dr Gill Matthewson
- Undertaken within: XYX Lab – Gender + Place
Current research projects
At Monash Art, Design and Architecture, we focus on the pursuit of research that addresses the social, economic and human issues facing Australia.
Lighting Cities: Creating Safer Spaces for Women and Girls
Deferring to more lights and brighter cities does not create safer spaces for women and girls. Lighting design is vital for gender-sensitive cities.
Merri Creek, Coburg Safety Audit
Women’s Safety Audits: A transformative approach to safety in the city
Preventing Sexual Harassment in Australian Public Transport Spaces
Uncovering how the safety of women and girls is challenged in public transport spaces.
Safer Cities
Highlighting alarming levels of harassment and abuse of girls and young women in cities.
Past research projects
Free to Be / Design Thinking
Prioritising thinking through concepts that could have real world impacts for women and girls.
Gender Equality Map
Providing a new picture of gender equality in Victoria to inform policy and urban design changes.
Gender Equity in Landscape Architecture
The participation of women in Australian landscape architecture, mapping and strategies.
Girl Walk: Identity, Crowd-mapping and Safety in the City for Women and Girls
Creating a culturally vibrant city that is inclusive for women and girls.
Just So F***ing Beautiful
Telling a story of female harassment in a public space – a new work for the 16th Venice Architecture Biennale: European Cultural Centre.
Moreland City Council
Using gender-sensitive design thinking to support of Moreland City’s future growth.
Pride Thinking / Design Thinking
Celebrating, bolstering and protecting equality, diversity and inclusion.
Safe Access to Reproductive Health Care in Australia
Formulating proposals for changes in law and policy at both the federal level and State level to remove barriers to access.
The SHEcity Exhibition
Bringing together experts to reimagine and redesign how our city could be more inclusive for women and girls.
Additional research
Associate Professor Nicole Kalms, Hypersexual City; The Provocation of Soft-Core Urbanism
2017
Hypersexual City examines the occupation of urban space through the mediated representation of women’s hypersexualized bodies. A complex transaction proliferates in the commercial urban space of cities and Hypersexual City seeks to address the cause and consequence of the increasing dominance of gendered representation.
This book uses architectural case studies and analysis to make visible the sexual politics of architecture and urbanism and, in doing so, reveal the ways that heterosexist culture shapes the spaces, behaviour and relationships formed in neoliberal cities. Hypersexual City announces how examining urbanism that operates through, and is framed by, sexual culture can demonstrate that architecture does not merely itself adrift in the hypersexualized landscape of contemporary cities, but is actively producing and contributing to the sexual regulation of urban life.