Associate Professor Nicole Kalms
Associate Professor Nicole Kalms
Associate Professor Nicole Kalms
Associate Dean, Research Director, XYX Lab (Monash Space Gender Communication Lab) Asssociate Professor, Spatial Design
Department of Design
Monash University Research Portal
Nicole Kalms is the Associate Dean (Research), 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).
News & events
Recent news
Upcoming events
Best in Category wins for Monash Design at the Victorian Premier’s Design Awards and a new Chair appointment
Research
Safer Cities
Sydney After Dark
HyperSext City
Lighting Cities: Creating Safer Spaces for Women and Girls
TramLab Toolkits
Merri Creek, Coburg Safety Audit
Contentious Cities: Design and the Gendered Production of Space
YourGround
Keep Running
Greater Cities Commission: Women’s Safety Charter Workshop
HyperSext City 2
Free to Be: Design Thinking Workshop
Preventing Sexual Harassment in Australian Public Transport Spaces
The Victorian Pride Centre
Safe Access to Reproductive Health Care in Australia
Just So F***ing Beautiful
Gender Equality Map
The SHEcity Exhibition
Gender Equity in Landscape Architecture
Moreland City Council Workshop
Built Upon By Design Symposium
Perceptions of Safety – pilot project
Precarious
