Two Major Research Projects
1. The Post-industrial Transformation of East London
My most recent research is about the planning and development of London's Olympic legacy in East London. This has been a five year research project exploring the urban regeneration associated with the London 2012 Olympic Games. The book entitled London's Olympic Legacy: the inside track makes the argument that London will become the test case city for other host cities bidding for the Olympic Games.
http://www.springer.com/gb/book/9780230313903 (Use 30% discount code: PM16THIRTY)
Click here to view the Illustrative Masterplan 2011
This is what reviewers have to say about the book:
‘No other author has achieved this degree of access to the institutions responsible for planning and delivering the Games and its legacies […]The text provides a timely “corrective” to reports, including official reports, that suggest London 2012 provides a ‘model’ of governance for future applicant and host cities of mega-events such as the Olympic and Paralympic Games.'
-Gavin Poynter, University of East London, UK
‘This book is deceptively analytical and wonderfully written. With the use of mega-projects to regenerate neighbourhoods continuing to be favoured by governments around the world, this book is sure to be of interest to all those working in the urban studies field.’
-Kevin Ward, University of Manchester, UK
‘Narrated as a drama and hugely readable, her splendid book shows why anthropology matters, and not just to anthropologists.’
-Thomas Hylland Eriksen, University of Oslo, Norway
2. The Post-industrial Transformation of South-East London
My previous research, set in the former Docklands of Bermondsey, was a turn of the Century project to investigate what it means to be working class in Britain at the beginning of the new millennium. A book entitled Educational Failure and Working Class White Children in Britain was the outcome of this project. The book focuses on the discrepancy between children and young people's experiences at home and on the street, and their experience of learning at school. The research asks whether schools are failing working class children or whether working class life presents alternative means for gaining social status that conflict with what it means to do well at school? Focusing on Southeast London, this book provides insight into class values as they are embodied, lived and experienced. When extracts of the book were published in Guardian Society controversy and debate were provoked. This was because the book touched a nerve in the nation by exposing the complex cultural politics of white working class pride at the beginning of the 21st Century.
http://www.palgrave.com/gb/book/9781403992161
This is what reviewers had to say about the book:
'I was educated by this'
Dame Marilyn Strathern, Professor of Social Anthropology, University of Cambridge
'A wonderfully enlightening and entertaining book. An anthropologist delivers an insider's account of life in inner London, and makes sense of the educational failure of working class white boys'
Adam Kuper, Professor of Social Anthropology, Brunel University
'A brilliant and highly entertaining study of a neglected subject'
Andrew Gimson, Daily Telegraph
'A compelling, often uncomfortable journey of self-discovery, as well as a fascinating insight into class and education in Britain. Educational Failure stands out for its honesty, its bravery and its originality'
Patrick Butler, Editor, Society Guardian
'This book should be read by teachers, parents, academics and policy makers, and by Bermondsey people. If they do, this book can be a catalyst for change'
Michael Holland, ex-Bermondsey playwright and film maker
'Overall, the manner in which Evans illuminates the inextricable relationship between social class and educational failure, but above all the way that she strengthens our understanding of what is meaningful to a working-class white person, cannot be underestimated.'
Peggy Froerer, Brunel University, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute