public interventions is a collaborative urban research-based practice based in London.

Catalina Pollak Williamson PhD

I am an urban researcher, architect, and academic working across participatory urbanism, civic pedagogy, and socially engaged spatial practice. My work explores the relationship between play, participation, and democracy, developing practice-based approaches that open up spaces for civic learning, collective experimentation, and the reconfiguration of social relations in contexts of urban inequality. This research usually develops in close collaboration with communities, institutions and local organisations.

The projects presented here reflect a commitment to socio-spatial justice, challenging power hierarchies through a reflexive, relational, and performative approach to urban research and social development practice. Current work extends this approach through experimental methods for urban resilience, including a digital participatory mapping platform and place-based interventions that position the city as a space for learning, care, and collective transformation.

I am a Senior Lecturer at the School of Architecture, University of East London.

Publications:

· Pollak Williamson C (2026) Prefiguring the City of Care: On Radical Play as a Situated Urban Praxis. Special Edition Urban Imaginaries and Urban Futures. Urban Studies Journal (SAGE). https://doi.org/10.1177/00420980261460621

· Pollak Williamson C (2027 forthcoming) Spaces of Participation, Playgrounds for Democracy. The February Journal.

· Pollak Williamson C (2027 forthcoming) Situated Civic Pedagogies: Creative Participatory Methods in Urban Design Research. In Regenerative Futures. Routledge.

· Pollak Williamson C (2025) Radical Play: Participatory Tactics and Pedagogies for Urban Transformation. PhD. University College London.

· Pollak Williamson C (2023) Migrating Proverbs: A Cross-disciplinary Approach to Cultural Integration. In Settlements and Displacement in Turkey, Routledge. DOI: 10.4324/9781003365686-8

· Pollak Williamson C (2022) ‘Fountain’, from Public Necessity to Modern Inconvenience: Contesting the Death of Public Toilets. Urban Studies (SAGE). DOI: 10.1177/0042098021994705

· Pollak Williamson C (2021) ‘Things We Hold Dear’: Mapping Immaterial Value in Urban Regeneration. Airea, 3(3). DOI: 10.2218/airea.5616

· Pollak Williamson C (2015) Outsider: Public Art and the Politics of the English Garden Square. Common-Editions. ISBN: 978-0993156335