Tim Cunningham

Tim Cunningham is currently a visiting assistant professor at the Pratt Institute, New York City. His PhD thesis, “Human Rights and the Architecture of Conflict,” is an examination of the political, economic, planning, and urban-design processes that shaped the city of Belfast across the latter decades of the 20th century. A key finding of his research involved uncovering hitherto secret documents that showed how the British Army in Northern Ireland used the planning and design of Belfast to control and segregate “suspect communities” during the conflict. He has published his research in several academic journals and is currently working on a monograph that compares the use of defensive architecture and urban design practices in Belfast with those in the United States. Prior to commencing his PhD, Tim worked for over 10 years with the Committee on the Administration of Justice (CAJ), an independent human-rights organization based in Belfast. During that time, his work focused on social and economic inequalities and the relationship between inequality and political conflict.