I trained as an architect and practice as an artist, with an interdisciplinary, research-based practice.

My recent practice and research has explored material poetics, memory, heritage and regeneration. In my PhD, 'Détour and Retour: Practices and poetics of salt as narratives of relation and re-generation in Brixton', I developed ideas that linked material cultures of salt through a series of journeys to a 'poetics of re-generation', expanding the language of regeneration and spatialising relational practice to emphasise an ethics of regeneration practices. I'm interested in the material cultures of migration and trade and in the relevance and significance of everyday practices, rituals and engagement with material culture to how places are made and continue to be remade and maintained. My book, Salted Earth: poetics of place and migration through four artistic journeys, is out now, published by Intellect in May 2026. See https://www.intellectbooks.com/salted-earth

My research and practice engages with place, and the public realm through materialities. I'm interested in how artistic interventions and critical spatial practices that highlight and reveal poetics of place could contribute to more ethical and effective models of regeneration and heritage practices (including a more ethical engagement with memory traces and their relation to the new).

I’m a board member of ixia (public art sector support) and am engaged in current research and policy around public art and socially engaged practice in the UK.

I originally trained in participatory research methods and tools and I bring an in depth knowledge and experience of participation and socially engaged practice to my teaching, research and practice, across architecture, art and design.

I am a current Co-Director of the Centre for Spatial and Social Justice and former deputy director of the Centre for Spatial, Environmental and Cultural Politics. 

Current and recent research projects, practice and networks:

Saline Ecologies: artistic salt practices at the edges of body, object and land

An 18-month programme of events funded by AHRC that explores how artistic and sensory practices with salt can offer interdisciplinary understandings of changing social, cultural and environmental ecologies. The conceptual framework of Saline Ecologies and edges offers an interdisciplinary understanding of ecologies, and ‘edges’ as the literal edges between land and water; other edges where salinity meets body/object/building; and also edges where different disciplines, concepts, places, pasts and presents, meet through salt. The programme is a partnership between the University of Brighton, Teeside University, the New Institute Centre for Environmental Humanities (NICHE) at the Universita Ca’Foscari and Hastings Contemporary, a gallery in Hastings, UK. 

Acts of Transfer – research project with Dr Lizzie Lloyd, UWE.

A practice-based research project, into the documentation and legacies of socially engaged practice and critical writing about the practice. The project was originally funded by Arts Council England, and the Centre for Spatial, Environmental and Cultural Politics at UoB, and outcomes included 2 symposia at UoB, talks at Arnolfini and workshops at Towner Eastbourne and Fontys University. A book, Acts of Transfer, published by Social Art Publications is available. An exposition on Research Catalogue published by RUUKKU showcases the films and text  outputs: https://ruukku.journal.fi/issue/view/13176

In 2026 we have been awarded Impact Acceleraration Account funding (AHRC) for a next phase of work in partnership with Brighton based arts organisation Quiet Down There, and we have also recieved follow-on-funding for a publication as an outcome of this work. Katy & Lizzie will be presenting some of the work in progress at the Art of Research conference at Espoo University, Finland, in November 2026.

Origination - project with Rebecca Beinart

An ongoing artistic research and practice project in collaboration with my sister, artist Rebecca Beinart, which we have been working on since 2008. Beginning as an investigation into our family history and migrations, growing into a wider project about the materiality, memory, and rituals of migration and diaspora, we have used performance, sculpture, film and other media to explore lost and invisible heritages. Outputs in 2024 included a residency at Fabrica and we have a forthcoming book chapter in the edited book Nomadic Performance Making: Experiences, Environments and Empathy out in 2027. Our 2020-21 works Correspondences recenlty featured in an exhibition at Fundacion Cazadores, Buenos Aires in July 2026 alongside the Memory Studies Association annual conference. Our current phase of work engages with our Grandmother Margaret Stanton's archive at the Modern Records Centre, Coventry which contains papers related to her activism over 70 years in social justice, antiracist and anticolonial campaigns. 

A Difficult Place: Cost of Living collaborative film project

This Ignite 3.1 (AHRC impact funding) funded project has worked with people living in the East Brighton area to create a film documenting experiences of the current cost of living crisis. In partnership with Phoenix Food Shop, an affordable food project based in the Phoenix Community Centre, we identified people who are currently using their resources and then worked with these individuals to tell their stories, supported by myself and filmmaker (John Edwards). The resulting film, ‘A Difficult Place’, has been screened in Brighton and at a number of conferences. This project aims to document the experiences that people are going through on a local level and to share these stories more widely so that these stories become more visible and people are not just seen as statistics.

Recent publications:

Katy Beinart, Salted Earth: Poetics of Place and Migration Through Four Artistic Journeys,  Intellect Books, 2026, https://www.intellectbooks.com/salted-earth

Katy Beinart & Lizzie Lloyd, Acts of Transfer: Documentation as Creative Reimagining RUUKKU, Issue 23, 2025

Forthcoming publications:

Katy and Rebecca Beinart, "Case Study 3: Origination" in Nomadic Performance Making: Experiences, Environments and Empathy, ed. by Rosie Garton, Mark Crossley and Ildiko Rippel, Bloomsbury 2027

I’m interested in supervising practice-based PhDs, particularly those that are interdisciplinary and combine art practice and theory with architecture/urban studies/spatial practice alongside other disciplines and practices (and may have a socially engaged or participatory element), and which might explore themes of migration, heritage, contested space and regeneration.

Please note that I am not taking on new PhD students in the next academic year (2026-27) but can discuss supporting projects which would start in the following year (2027-28).

Completed PhD Students: 

Ilenia Atzori: From ruins to community heritage: The role of storytelling in building a collective memory

Current PhD Students:

Antony Dixon: Here is where we meet (Body, Matter and Things): A sensory investigation, through co-creative practice, of the misplaced and found.

Jessica Melville-Brown: Co-designing the future: An exploration into the development of new methods for creative engagement, examining the influence of gender roles, socio-economic and ethno-cultural factors in the co-design process with young people.

Angela Cheung: Neurological Access in the Built Environment: A Theoretical Framework and Assessment Instrument for Architectural Practice 

Reem Acason: Material Afterlives: The Re-activation of Archaeological Fragments through the Diasporic Art Practices of Contemporary SWANA Women

Simon James: Deep Listening to the Unheard: What knowledge emerges when listening with is positioned as a way of knowing the landscapes and communities of Whitehawk?

PhD Examinations: 

James O'Leary: Interface Architecture: Towards the transformation of Belfast's 'Peacewalls' through Situated Practice (Internal Examiner, UoB)

Jina Lee: Drawing ‘New Maps’: Critical Cartography and Ethnographical Enquiry Through Drawing Practice (External Examiner, UAL)

Anna Sephton: 'Who invites the archive home? Animating a 1930s queer South African photographic collection through collaborative filmmaking (Internal Examiner, UoB)

M Phil examinations:

Lida Driva: The Operation of the Hidden. Towards an understanding of architectural and urban space: the case of Omonia Square (External Examiner, University of Westminster)