Dr. Jiayi (Jennifer) Jin is a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Architecture and Built Environment. Her research is transdisciplinary spanning the fields of architectural theory, spatial morphology, digital technologies, social sciences and cultural studies.

Before joining Northumbria, she was the RA for the ‘Augmented Space for Riot 1831’ project at Nottingham Castle (funded by AHRC, NESTA and Arts Council England), and engaged in several research projects on emergent ways of designing the interactive space grounded in the field of Human-Computer Interaction at the Mixed Reality Laboratory (MRL), University of Nottingham. She engaged in various museum projects like the expansion of the Hong Kong Space Museum ($4 million) as a lead researcher for facilitating situated, embodied, and performative interactions. She also founded an architecture and idea studio Inter-lab in 2014 for practice-based projects covering museums & exhibitions, architectural design, urban studies and planning.

Her research focuses on the role of new media and technologies in different aspects of knowledge production and socio-spatial linkage generation, designing and developing spatial experiences with physical environment - both indoors and outdoors. Jiayi is also an active researcher on strategic planning for the development of inclusive cities, in response to social, spatial and environmental inequalities.

She is currently the PI for Gender-inclusive Cities and Co-I for the British Academy Project: Shared Understandings of a Sustainable Future: CEoN - Developing a Grassroots Sustainable Futures Platform: Collective Participation in Community-Based Cultural Organisations (SSF\210084).

Jiayi welcomes applications for conventional & practice-as-research PhD proposals within the fields of museum architecture and digital humanities; Architectural space and body movement with heritage buildings, museums or galleries; Performance in an era of climate crisis; Urban interaction includes exploring co-participation and co-curation with inhabitants, urban performance and practice research.

In terms of university leadership and teaching, Jiayi is the Studio Lead of MArch Studio: Performing Architectures (2018-Now), Acting Programme Lead for Master of Architecture (2021-2022). She teaches widely across the department, including BA Architecture and MArch studios, BA Architecture communications, MArch theory modules, and Ph.D. supervision.