Date and time
Wednesday 19 February 2020
17.30 – 19.30
Location
Queen Mary University of London
2.22 Graduate Centre
Mile End Campus
London E1 4DH
Living Through Uncertain Times
Speakers
Michele Lancione (University of Sheffield), Constance Smith (University of Manchester)
Across the world, cities are facing crisis on multiple fronts, putting the conditions for everyday life under tremendous pressure. Urban inhabitants are forced to recon with abstract processes of change in part by establishing informal networks of care and social infrastructures of support. Exploring the emergence of such improvisatory practices, networks, collectives and gatherings, this seminar asks: How can critical urban scholarship develop more rigorous approaches to conceptualise, question and contribute to improving the conditions for urban life to flourish in times of uncertainty?
The Urban Salon with The QMUL City Centre invites Michele Lancione (University of Sheffield) and Constance Smith (Social Anthropology, University of Manchester) to address these topics. Following their talks, there will be an open discussion on the theme of living through uncertain times.
More about the speakers:
Michele Lancione is an urban ethnographer and activist interested in issues of marginality, diversity, and radical politics. His most recent writing has focused on homelessness, racialised displacement and underground life in Bucharest, Romania. Michele is member of the Common Front for the Right to Housing (FCDL), and corecipient of two Antipode Awards. He is also one of the founders and Editors of the open-source Radical Housing Journal (RHJ), an Editor of City, and Corresponding Editor for Europe at IJURR. He is based at the Urban Institute, University of Sheffield (UK), where he is commencing work on a 5-year European Research Council funded program on ‘Radical Housing’.
Michael’s talk will be: Recentering the politics of home. Notes from within and from below
Constance Smith is a UKRI Future Leader Fellow in Social Anthropology at the University of Manchester, where her research focuses on the anthropology of architecture, time and urban change. Exploring shifting landscapes of buildings, planning and infrastructure, her work examines how urban materialities influence temporal engagements. She holds a PhD from UCL and an MA from Columbia University.
Connie’s talk will be: Nairobi in the making: precarious architecture, ‘world-class’ futures and urban belonging
