Trude Renwick
Trude Renwick is a scholar of architecture and urbanism in Thailand and Southeast Asia whose research examines the intersections of commercial, spiritual and infrastructural space. She received her PhD from the University of California, Berkeley in Architecture History, Theory and Society with a designated emphasis in Anthropology and a certificate in Global Urban Humanities in 2021. She also received a Master’s in Design Studies with a focus on the History and Philosophy of Design from Harvard University.
At HKU Trude will complete her first book manuscript, tentatively titled “Eat, Pray, Shop: Spiritual Practice and the Shaping of Global Commercial Space in Bangkok.” This ethnography examines the role of official and unofficial spiritual practice in shaping Bangkok’s commercial landscape. Cases like the 2016 restrictions on street vending, the rebranding of Bangkok’s luxury malls, and the emergence of the city’s first creative district demonstrate how spiritual space is used to legitimize as well as resist commercial development. She completed this research over a span of two years and was funded by a Fulbright - Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad grant.
Her next project, “Peripheries Mobilized,” examines the impact of the Chinese-sponsored Pan Asia Railway on conceptions of periphery and frontier in cities along its central route. As key nodes along this new infrastructural network, previously “peripheral” urban outposts like Khon Kaen and Luang Namtha are now central foci for the Thai and Lao governments. Investments made in these remote cities by their respective national governments are not only in tourism and trade but in the creative industries and other intellectual infrastructures. Questions she hopes to explore through this project include: How is this newfound infrastructural investment altering the flow of labor into and out of these urban centers? Who are some of the non-state project stakeholders involved in the development of these small cities from artists to corporations?
Email: trenwick@hku.hk
List of Publications
“Jay Fai and the Anomaly of the ‘Good’ Street Vendor” February 2021 Issue
Food, Culture and Society, Mobilizing the Streets
Power and Ritual in the City: Pilgrimage and Political Juncture at Bangkok’s Sanam Luang
Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, Co-Author Bronwyn Isaacs (Secondary)
Accepted Pending Revisions
Collective Construction: The Role of “Community” in Shaping the Global Face of a Bangkok Neighborhood
City and Society
Accepted Pending Revisions
Co-written with Dr. Hayden Shelby (Primary Author), University of Cincinnati - Urban Planning
“Creativity in the Global City: Spirituality, Authenticity and Commerce in Bangkok”
Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, Speculative Urbanism Under Review
BOOK CHAPTERS
Informal Markets Project Forthcoming
Who’s Next? We Need to Talk About Homelessness 2022
Co-Author Valentina Rozas-Krause
Edited by Andres Lepik and Daniel Talesnik
The Mall as Political: The Urban Interweaving of Bangkok’s Past and Present 2015
Chapter in edited volume entitled: Politics and Aesthetics of Creativity: City Culture and Space in
East Asia.
Edited by Lu Pan, Heung Wah Wong and Karin Ling-fung Chau
BOOK REVIEWS
Book Review in American Anthropologist January 2022
Rituals of Care: Karmic Politics in an Aging Thailand by Felicity Aulino. Cornell University Press, 2019, 210 pp.
Book Review in The Asian Journal of Social Science September 2022
Political Violence in Southeast Asia since 1945: Case Studies from Six Countries. Routledge, 2021.