Dr Gareth Millington
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Profile

Biography

Gareth is an urban sociologist. He currently leads a Leverhulme-funded five-year project titled ‘Archiving the Inner City: Race and the Politics of Urban Memory’. The project involves fieldwork in London, Paris and Philadelphia. Gareth is also working on a British Academy/ GCRF project based in Lagos, titled ‘Pneuma-city’: Frictional Infrastructure, road ecologies and valorisation of end-of-life tyres in Lagos’. He has recently finished work on another British Academy/ GCRF funded project titled ‘Religious Urbanization in Africa’, which examines how urban infrastructures such as energy, roads, bridges, homes, schools, universities and hospitals are increasingly being provided by religious organisations, especially Pentecostal churches. This study is based in Lagos and Kinshasa. 

Gareth joined the department in September 2012 having previously taught at University of Roehampton, London and University of Essex. Gareth studied Sociology at University of Salford, Goldsmiths, University of London and University of Essex where he received his PhD in Sociology in 2006. His doctoral research on hostility directed towards asylum seekers in a seaside town was funded by the ESRC. Gareth previously worked as a schoolteacher in Essex and London.

Gareth’s first monograph Race, Culture and the Right to the City: Centres, Peripheries, Margins was published in late 2011. This book was based on British Academy funded research carried out in La Courneuve, Paris and Long Island, New York. In addition to pursuing research interests at the intersection of migration and urbanization, Gareth is also fascinated by visual and literary representations of cities and urban life. He teaches a third year module related to this work called Cinema, Cities and Historical Sociology. Gareth’s second book, which combines these interests, is titled Urbanization and the Migrant in British Cinema: Spectres of the City (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016). Gareth is co-author (with Rowland Atkinson) of Urban Criminology: The City, Disorder, Harm and Social Control (Routledge, 2019). Gareth’s current book project (with Daryl Martin) is titled Decline and the Sublime in Modern Urban Culture.

Gareth is a member of CURB (Centre for Urban Research) and the Culture, Values, Practices research cluster. He co-convenes the Archiving the City in the Centre for Modern Studies (with David Huyssen, History). 

Research

Overview

Gareth’s current research projects are focused the following areas:

• The twentieth-century 'inner city', race and memory
• Decline and the sublime in urban culture
• Infrastructures and streetscapes in sub-Saharan African cities
• Urban aesthetics and cultural political economy

Gareth is the principle investigator for a five year Department of Sociology research project funded by the Leverhulme Trust named Archiving the Inner City: Race and the Politics of Urban Memory. The project examines how, by whom and for what purposes the twentieth century ‘inner city’ is remembered, curated and represented; to learn more about the project click here.

Gareth is interested in supervising PhD students in any of the above, or related areas.

Publications

Selected publications

• Atkinson, R., & Millington, G. (2020) ‘Urban Criminology: Thinking Beyond the Paradox’, Criminological Encounters, 3(1), pp. 62-72.
• Millington, G., & Rizov, V. (2019). ‘What makes city life meaningful is the things we hide’ A dialogue on existential urban space between Marshall Berman and Orhan Pamuk. City, 23(6), 697-713.
• Millington, G., & Wallace, A. (2019). ‘Working-class heritage and the city.’, Journal of Urban Cultural Studies, 6(2-3), 183-197.
• Atkinson, R. and Millington, G. (2018) Urban Criminology: The city, disorder, harm and social control. London: Routledge
• Millington, G. (2018) ‘The End of the Time of the City? Urbanization and the Migrant in British Cinema’ in Meissner, M and Lindner, C. (eds) The Routledge International Handbook of Urban Imaginaries. New York: Routledge
• Garbin, D. and Millington, G. (2017) ‘“Central London under siege”: Diaspora, “race” and the right to the (global) city’, The Sociological Review, 66 (1), 138-154
• Millington, G. (2017) ‘Los Angeles, urban history and neo-noir cinema’ in Brown, M. and Carrabine, E. (eds) Routledge International Handbook of Visual Criminology. London: Routledge
• Millington, G. (2016) 'Urbanization and the city image in Lowry at Tate Britain: towards a critique of cultural cityism', International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, DOI: 10.1111/1468-2427.12375
• Millington, G. (2016) Urbanization and the Migrant in British Cinema: Spectres of the City. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan
• Millington, G. (2016) ‘The cosmopolitan contradictions of planetary urbanization’, The British Journal of Sociology, DOI: 10.1111/1468-4446.12200
• Millington, G. (2016) ‘“I found the truth in Foot Locker”: London 2011, Urban Culture, and the Post‐Political City’, Antipode, 48 (3), pp. 705-723
• Millington, G. (2016) 'Urbanization and the city image in Lowry at Tate Britain: towards a critique of cultural cityism', International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, DOI: 10.1111/1468-2427.12375
• Millington, G. (2016) Urbanization and the Migrant in British Cinema: Spectres of the City. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan
• Millington, G. (2015) ‘The right to the city (if you want it): Marshall Berman and urban culture, Journal of Urban Cultural Studies, 2(1-2), pp. 177-185
• Millington, G. (2015) ‘Remaining faithful to the city: Marshall Berman's provocative optimism’, City, 19(1), pp. 112-120.
• Millington, G. (2015) ‘Sub/Urban Histories Against The Grain: Myth And Embourgeoisement In Essex Noir’, Journal of Historical Sociology, DOI: 10.1111/johs.12087
• Watt, P., Millington, G. and Huq, R. (2014) ‘East London Mobilities:  The “Cockney Diaspora” and the Remaking of the Essex Ethnoscape’ in Watt, P. and Smets, P (eds) Neighbourhoods, Mobilities and Belonging in the City and Suburb, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan
• Millington, G. (2013) ‘„Anti-riots“ und Postpolitik in der neoliberalen Stadt: London im August 2011’. Berliner Journal für Soziologie, 23, pp.51-73
• Millington, G. (2012) ‘“Man Dem Link Up”: London’s Anti-Riots and Urban Modernism’, Sociological Research Online, 17 (4) 12
• Millington, G. and Garbin, D. (2012) ‘Territorial Stigma and the Politics of Resistance in a Parisian banlieue: La Courneuve and Beyond’, Urban Studies, 49 (10), pp. 2067-2083
• Millington, G. (2012) ‘The Outer-Inner City: Urbanization, Migration and 'Race' in London and New York’, Urban Research and Practice, 5 (1) pp.6-25
• Millington, G. (2011) ‘Race’, Culture and the Right to the City: centres, peripheries, margins, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan
• Millington, G. (2010) ‘Racism, class ethos and place: the value of context in narratives about asylum seekers’, Sociological Review, 58 (3), pp. 361-80
• Millington, G. (2008) ‘From Bedsit-land to ‘Cultural Hub’: Regenerating Southend-on-Sea’ in P. Cohen and M. Rustin (eds) London’s Turning: The Prospect of Thames Gateway, Aldershot: Ashgate
• Millington, G. (2005) ‘Meaning, Materials and Melancholia: Understanding the Palace Hotel’, Social & Cultural Geography, 6 (4) pp. 531-549