Thomas-Bernard Kenniff is a professor of environmental design at the École de design de l’Université du Québec à Montréal since 2015.
His research and design work focuses on the formalization of social arrangements and their spaces, municipal architectural devices, the theory and design of urban public spaces, and related issues of identity and politics. He is also interested in design processes, including inter- and transdisciplinary methods, collaborative practices, the process of subjectivation, and the application of the concepts of dialogue, ambivalence and indeterminacy to the processes and pedagogy of the design project. His research has been funded by SSHRC, FRQSC, Canada Council for the Arts, UCL and UQAM.
His doctoral thesis on dialogue, ambivalence and the design of public space, defended in 2013, is nominated by University College London (UCL) for a research award from the Royal Institute of British Architects.
He is co-founder, with Professor Carole Lévesque (École de design, UQAM), of the Bureau d’étude de pratiques indisciplinées (www.be-pi.ca), a researcher member of the Villes-Régions-Monde (VRM) inter-university network, and an associate researcher at the Canada Chair on Small and Medium-sized Cities (Hiên Pham, ESG, UQAM).