Act.
Intervene.
Publish.

Konesh is an artist-led research lab and publication on critical and creative spatial practice.
/kɒn(ə)ʃ/ — act, activism in Farsi.

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In a world of increasing environmental and ecological catastrophes, and growing social injustice, we ask how creative and critical spatial practice can contribute to fresh understandings of alternative creation of everyday spaces.

We invite artists, architects, activists, scholars, and policy makers to come together to investigate our contemporary condition of lived spaces. We create projects and publications to critically engage with the social and material production of public spaces. In this sense, we push for a dialogue between a diversity of thinkers and practitioners, coming from different disciplines and places, thus puzzling geographical borders and disciplinary thresholds.

Exploring public spaces at the intersection of social, economic and political processes, we examine the relation between humans, non-humans and built environments to better understand how they reinforce and reflect on the existing power relations and hierarchies and inequalities. By inviting a diverse range of thinkers and practitioners from different fields we aim to facilitate interdisciplinary collaboration and knowledge exchange, allowing for a more comprehensive understanding of the complex issues related to public space.

Konesh publishes interdisciplinary content in edited issues. We also curate cultural interventions as site-specific events across the world, which are live-streamed online, engaging a global audience.

Founded

2018 by Saba Zavarei and Vanessa Lehmann at Goldsmiths, University of London

Published Issues

Trace (2020) · Scale (2020)
Dwelling — Autumn 2026

Collaboration & Enquiries

info@konesh.space

Team

Director & Editor in Chief

Dr Saba Zavarei is an artist, urbanist, and researcher. At the intersection of performance studies and urban studies, she explores the relationship between bodies and public spaces, and how bodies produce, use or transgress their everyday spaces. She is an associate lecturer at Goldsmiths, and a visiting research fellow at IAS, UCL. Her forthcoming book (Cambridge University Press, 2026), based on her doctoral thesis, explores how Iranian women create emancipatory spaces through transgressive everyday performances.

Guest Editors (DWELLING)

Marthe Lisson

Marthe Lisson is the Editor of Think Pieces, the UCL Institute of Advanced Studies’ online review

Dr Peter Browning

Peter is a Lecturer in Applied Linguistics at UCL’s Institute of Education. His research is motivated by an interest in exploring the complex relationships between discourse, culture and society; critical questions around language, place, memory, futurity, gender and sexuality are central to his thinking. His work has been published in International Journal of the Sociology of Language, London Review of Education as in book series including Routledge’s Critical Studies in Multilingualism and Research in Language Education.

Dr Flora Sagers

Flora is an interdisciplinary early-career academic in contemporary culture (Post-doc UCL, PhD York, MA Cantab) and freelance editor, writer, curator, and educator. Her work explores the relationship between the written and unwritten world: how narratives—literary, visual, spatial—construct and contest the realities we live in.