I am Dr. Melissa Harrison (b. 1989 New Zealand), a Berlin-based researcher and practitioner, with a background in architecture and movement practice. My work engages with critical urban theory, spatial practices, commoning, and embodied experience. I am curious about the generative possibilities of difference, listening otherwise, convivialities of care, compositions of assembly, and learning to be together and apart in the world. Amongst other things, I am a member of the Urban Commons Research Collective that co-edited the Urban Commons Handbook (2022); an editorial member of the publishing platform AoA; and a member of the >top project space and association, where I co-initiated the project Common(s)Lab (2017-2021) together with Katharina Moebus.
Research Interests
Critical spatial practice; spaces of commoning; the politics of space and bodies; relational aesthetics; postcapitalist praxis; multi-species becoming; (un)learning; transformative/situated pedagogies.
Recent Publications
Gapševičius, M., Damm, U., and Harrison, M (eds.) (2026). Non-Machines: Experiencing Life Beyond Machines and Humans. Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag.
Gapševičius, M., Damm, U., and Harrison, M. (2026). Introduction. In M. Gapševičius, U. Damm, and M. Harrison (eds.). Non-Machines: Experiencing Life Beyond Machines and Humans. Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag.
Harrison, M. (2026). Commoning across Difference: Thinking and Practicing with the More-than-human. In M. Gapševičius, U. Damm, and M. Harrison (eds.). Non-Machines: Experiencing Life Beyond Machines and Humans. Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag.
Akbil, E., Can, E. and Harrison, M. (2027, forthcoming). Commoning Vulnerability: Fragility as a Resource for(Re)generative Spatial Practices. In T. Stoppani and G. George Themistokleous (eds.). Body matters. Routledge Press.
Harrison, M. (2025). Common Sense, Common Space. In J. Bingham-Hall. Staging Ground: Infrastructures, Performance, and Bodies in Movement. London, Paris: Theatrum Mundi; Barcelona: dpr-barcelona.
Harrison, M. (2024). Choreographies of Commoning. Nomi: Agents of Alternatives.
