I have broad knowledge in the fields of architecture, design, urbanism, and digital and technological practices. My primary research interests are in linking 20th century and contemporary spatial and urban philosophy with critical theories of social practice in order to reveal the conditions of the marginalised, the contested and the peripheral in any inhabited situation or installation design, architectural/urban context. I also have expertise in the theory and critique of architectural representation and material culture under the influence of technology (between the early 1970s up to the current period). In my work I use inter/trans-disciplinary methodologies such as second-order cybernetics, transmedia representation tools/mapping, and digital anthropology.

Reviewer for:
– ESRC Global Challege Research Fund Peer Review College Member.
– Leonardo Manuscripts and Reviews: The International Society for the Arts, Sciences, and Technology
– Routledge Architecture section.
– Guest reviewer for Footprint: Delft Architecture Theory Journal
– Re-New: Digital Arts Festival – THE BIG PICTURE: the confluence of art, science and technology, Copenhagen, Denmark 2013.

Principal Investigator for Creative Recovery: Mapping Refugees’ Memories of Home, as Heritage funded by the European Cultural Foundation, Courageous Citizens 2018. The project is in partnership with British Red Cross, Plymouth – Devon. Grand award: €10K, August 2018-October 2019.

Founder of the Displacement Studies Research Network

Human and Urban Displacement: From Crises to Creativity
2018 Launch event of the Displacement Studies Research Network

The edited book is out! Worldmaking As Techné: Participatory Art, Music, and Architecture edited by Hosale, MD., Murrani, S., and de Campo, A. published by Riverside Architectural Press 2018.

Publications:

– MURRANI, S., LLOYD, H., and POPOVICI, I. (working paper). Participatory journeys into thick/deep maps: memoryscapes of the creative spatial practice of making-home in displacement. Journal of Migration and Society. New York and Oxford: Berghahn.

– MURRANI, S. 2020. Review of Refugia: Radical Solutions to Mass Displacement, Journal of Refugee Studies, feaa077, https://doi.org/10.1093/jrs/feaa077

Murrani, S. 2020. ‘Contingency and Plasticity: The Dialectical Re-construction of the Concept of Home in Displacement’. Journal of Culture and Psychology. Vol. 26(2) 173–186.

Murrani, S. 2019. ‘Urban creativity through displacement and spatial disruption’. In: Routledge Handbook of Henri Lefebvre, the City and Urban Society, Leary-Owhin, M. and McCarthy, J. (eds.), London: Routledge.

Hosale, MD., Murrani, S. and de Campo, A. 2018. ‘Introduction from the Editors’ to Worldmaking as Techné: Exploring Worlds of Participatory Art, Architecture, and Music. Cambridge, Ontario: Riverside Architectural Press, pp. iv-xxvi.

Murrani, S. 2018. ‘Estranged Space Appropriated’, In: Hosale, MD., Murrani, S., and de Campo, A., Worldmaking as Techné: Exploring Worlds of Participatory Art, Architecture, and Music. Cambridge, Ontario: Riverside Architectural
Press, pp. 296-319.

Murrani, S. 2016. ‘Baghdad’s thirdspace: between liminality, anti-structures and territorial mappings’. The Journal of Cultural Dynamics, 28 (2), pp. 189-220.

Murrani, S. 2016. The Right to a Parking Space: The Spatial State of Marginality, blogpost for the Arts Institute. Available: here

Murrani, S. 2014. To Cognise a Liminal Reality: on constructing a spatial and social assemblage of peripheral sites and situations in England. In: Architecture and Writing: ARCHTHEO ’14 / Theory of Architecture Conference Proceeding Book, 6th-8th of November 2014, Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University. DAKAM: Istanbul, 217-226.

Murrani, S. 2012. The Socio-Temporary in Architecture: Territories of Second-Order Cybernetics. The International Journal of Art, Culture and Design Technologies 2 (1), 44-56.

Murrani, S & EMMETT, M. 2011. Overlaid Realities. In: Cabinet: Changing Perceptions Catalogue, University of Plymouth Press, UK. 16-17 & 26-27.

Murrani, S. 2011. Third Way Architecture: Between Cybernetics and Phenomenology. Technoetic Arts: A Journal of Speculative Research 8 (3), 267-281.

Murrani, S. 2010. Architecture of Generative Situations. In: 13th Generative Art Conference. Milan – Italy, Domus Argenia Publisher.

Murrani, S. 2009. Instability and Incompleteness in Architecture. In: ASCOTT, R., BAST, G., FIEL, W., JAHRMANN, M. & amp; SCHNELL, R. (eds.) New Realities: Being Syncretic. Wien: Springer. 202-206.

Murrani, S. 2007. The Behaviour of Architectural Forms. Technoetic Arts: A Journal of Speculative Research 5 (3), 133-149.

Murrani, S. 2005. Re-thinking Architectural Form: The Emergence of Self-organized Architectural Form. In: Altered States Conference: Transformations of Perception, Place and Performance Plymouth – UK. Liquid Reader.

Reviews:

Murrani, S. 2014. Review of Soft Estate by Edward Chell. Leonardo Reviews, July 2014. Available: here.

Murrani, S. 2016. Review of Drawing Ambience: Alvin Boyarsky and The Architectural Association by Igor Marjanović and Jan Howard. Leonardo Reviews, May 2016. Available: here.

Published abstracts:

Murrani, S. 2011. Unstable Territories of Representation: Architectural Experience and the Behaviour of Forms, Spaces and the Collective Dynamic Environment (PhD thesis abstract). LEA – LABS: Leonardo ABstracts Service, UK. Leonardo Online: Unstable Territories of Representation.

Murrani, S. 2007. Architectural Form between Theory and Practice: Architectural Form Perceivedand Conceived as a Set of Behaviours. In: Vice Chancellor’s Research and Innovation Conference Plymouth – UK. Poster.

Murrani, S. 2006. Stigmergic Architecture. In: ASCOTT, R., ed. Art and Consciousness in the Post-Biological Era: 8th International Consciousness Reframed Conference Plymouth – UK. University of Plymouth Press.

Murrani, S. 2003. Transphenomic Architecture. In: MACIEL, K., PARENTE, A., ASCOTT, R., NOBREGA, G., eds. Sensational Net International Conference Fortaleza – Brazil. 27.