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urbanstudiesfoundation.org
Urban Studies Foundation
@urbanstudiesfoundation.org
1.8K followers 28 following 250 posts
We provide grant funding for innovative research projects that advance the frontiers of urban knowledge. Follow for news & updates. Read more on our website: https://urbanstudiesfoundation.org
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urbanstudiesfoundation.org
🆕 New #USFblog post: "Vital grounds: Revaluing urban soils in the afterlife of mining"

Dr Anastasiya Halauniova on a USF Urban Urgencies project in Newcastle upon Tyne. 🌱

🔗 Read here: zurl.co/3BCU3
👉 Learn more: zurl.co/ySffE

#UrbanStudies #UrbanStudiesFoundation #USF #USFUrbanUrgencies
Tile with the text "USF Blog", the title "Vital grounds: Revaluing urban soils in the afterlife of mining" and the author name Anastasiya Halauniova, over a photograph of a roadside construction site. A lorry stands behind a mound of excavated soil and orange safety netting, with large green trees and a blue glass tower behind. The USF logo is in the top right corner. Dark blue tile with the label "USF Blog" and the USF logo, and white text reading: "Soil remediation is not a process of returning soils to an imagined 'pristine' condition, a condition that may not be attainable, but a process through which new regimes of value, new forms of urban governance, and new multispecies relations are produced."
October 6, 2026 at 1:55 PM
urbanstudiesfoundation.org
🆕 New #USFblog post: "Urbanisation beyond Nusantara: a new, more sustainable growth machine?"

Looking beyond administrative boundaries, former #USFInternationalFellow Dr Galuh Syahbana Indraprahasta explores the 'Tri-City Superhub' in Indonesia.

🔗 Read here: zurl.co/xXt3d

#UrbanStudies #USF
Two large sculptures frame a view of Nusantara's government district, with hills and trees in the background. Text overlay reads 'USF Blog: Urbanisation beyond Nusantara — A new, more sustainable growth machine?' by Dr Galuh Syahbana Indraprahasta. USF Blog quote tile on a grey background: 'Taking a city-region lens to examining the broader urbanisation of Nusantara offers a fresh perspective and empirical insights, especially since Nusantara and its surrounding areas are still in the early stages of development.'
September 30, 2026 at 2:00 PM
urbanstudiesfoundation.org
🆕 #USFBlog: "Repairing the city? From shiny new infrastructure to the everyday labour of keeping infrastructure 'alive'"

Former #USFInternationalFellow Dr Lazarus Jambadu on water infrastructure maintenance, politics, and urban inequality across Accra and Dar es Salaam.

🔗 zurl.co/XJUEG

#USF
Photo of a partially dug-up road in Accra or Dar es Salaam, with a man in a white shirt standing beside the excavation, a red barrier, and street life in the background including a motorbike taxi and a truck. Text overlay reads "USF Blog: Repairing the city — From shiny new infrastructure to the everyday labour of keeping infrastructure 'alive'," credited to Dr Lazarus Jambadu. Dark blue tile with white text reading a quote from the USF blog: "Perhaps what we call a 'system' is actually a constantly moving assemblage of materials, people, institutions, skills, and improvisations held together through maintenance and repair work. Thus, the city works because someone is constantly working to make it work." USF Blog label in top left.
September 25, 2026 at 11:53 AM
urbanstudiesfoundation.org
🔔 New on #USFBlog: "Open Kitchen: Weaving protection and care for communities on the move"

Prof Andrés Salcedo Fidalgo, Liliana Gaviria, and Karol Viviana Cubillos Gutiérrez on a USF Urban Urgencies project in Bogotá.🇨🇴

🔗 Read here: zurl.co/TJh3T
🔗 Learn more: zurl.co/efcIn

#USF #USFUrbanUrgencies
USF Blog graphic for "Open Kitchen: Weaving protection and care for communities on the move" by Andrés Salcedo Fidalgo, showing a group of people seated around a long table in an outdoor community space with brick walls and bamboo structures in Bogotá, Colombia. Photo credit: Fundación Casa B. Urban Studies Foundation logo in the top right corner. Quote graphic from the USF Blog post "Open Kitchen", displaying the text: "By transforming vulnerability into leadership, we hope to rebuild confidence, amplify community agency and compel meaningful public policy responses." White text on a grey background with the Urban Studies Foundation logo.
September 23, 2026 at 12:00 PM
urbanstudiesfoundation.org
🔔 Upcoming event: "Navigating sacredness in the Anthropocene: Towards a post-secular political ecology?"

📅 25 September 2026 | 09:30–14:00 (GMT+2)
📍 Institute of Advanced Study, Sweelinck Room, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
🔗 Register: zurl.co/S4rrS
👉 More details: zurl.co/zmVgU

#USF
Event tile with a light blue background featuring the title "Navigating sacredness in the Anthropocene: Towards a post-secular political ecology?". It lists the presenters' names (Raina Ghosh, Maria Raquel Passos Lima, Lav Kanoi, and Giovanna Capponi) at the bottom left and features a right-pointing arrow icon at the bottom right. Informational event tile with a light blue background displaying logistical details: date and time (25 September 2026, 09:30 - 14:00 GMT+2), location (Institute of Advanced Study, Sweelinck Room, Amsterdam, The Netherlands), language (English), and a brief description about exploring post-secular political ecology.
September 21, 2026 at 1:53 PM
urbanstudiesfoundation.org
📢 Call for Papers: "Urban polycrisis and creative storytelling: A feminist/and decolonial approach to urban pedagogies" — co-convened by USF International Fellows Dr Nian Paul and Dr Raina Ghosh at ISA 2027 in Gwangju, Korea. 🇰🇷

🗓️ Abstracts by 14 October 2026
🔗 zurl.co/IUIIV

#UrbanStudiesFoundation
Call for Papers graphic for "Urban Polycrisis and Creative Storytelling: A Feminist/and Decolonial Approach to Urban Pedagogies" by Nian Paul and Raina Ghosh, displayed in large text on a light grey background with the Urban Studies Foundation logo. Event details graphic for the "Urban Polycrisis and Creative Storytelling" CFP, showing congress dates (4–10 July 2027), abstract deadline (14 October 2026), location (XXI ISA World Congress of Sociology, Gwangju, Korea), language (English), and four guiding research questions on urban polycrisis, feminist/decolonial methods, creative storytelling, and experimental pedagogies. Light grey background with the Urban Studies Foundation logo.
September 18, 2026 at 12:15 PM
urbanstudiesfoundation.org
🔔 New #USFBlog post: "Withdrawing from the city: Co-researching social withdrawal in Osaka and Seoul"

Dr Didi Kyoung-Ae Han on a USF Urban Urgencies project in Osaka and Seoul. 🇯🇵🇰🇷

🔗 Read here: zurl.co/k3Fz7
👉 Learn more: zurl.co/yqqSR

#UrbanStudies #UrbanStudiesFoundation #USF #USFUrbanUrgencies
USF Blog graphic for "Withdrawing from the city: Co-researching social withdrawal in Osaka and Seoul" by Dr Didi Kyoung-Ae Han, illustrated with pencil drawings of figures with Japanese text, on a white background with the Urban Studies Foundation logo. Drawing credit: Kumiko. Quote graphic from the USF Blog post "Withdrawing from the city", displaying the text: "Like canaries in a coal mine, withdrawing individuals are the first to sense in their bodies the overload that capitalist urban metabolism produces." Dark text on a light blue background with the Urban Studies Foundation logo.
September 16, 2026 at 12:00 PM
urbanstudiesfoundation.org
📢 Upcoming #USFSeminarSeriesAwards Event

La Universidad en los contextos de encierro: Universities in Contexts of Confinement

📅 16 September 2026 | 13:00–15:00 (GMT-5)
📍 Auditorio Paulo Freire, National Pedagogical University, Bogotá, Colombia
🗣️ Spanish & English
🔗 Learn more: zurl.co/ppWwi
Event graphic for "La Universidad en los contextos de encierro: Universities in contexts of confinement", displayed in large white text on a dark navy background with the Urban Studies Foundation logo. Event details graphic showing date (16 September 2026, 13:00–15:00 GMT-5), location (Auditorio Paulo Freire, National Pedagogical University, Bogotá, Colombia), languages (Spanish & English), and a description of the event exploring universities as spaces of confinement across Latin America and Palestine, on a dark navy background with the Urban Studies Foundation logo.
September 14, 2026 at 12:03 PM
urbanstudiesfoundation.org
📢 Upcoming #USFSeminarSeriesAwards online training session

"AI agents for human mobility in healthy & sustainable cities"

🗓️ 29 September 2026
🕐 18:00 China (UTC+8) | 15:30 India (UTC+5:30) | 11:00 UK (UTC+1)
🔗 Register: zurl.co/Ox6G5

👉 Learn more: zurl.co/iGKH5
👉 Project website: zurl.co/RVNA4
Event graphic for "AI agents for human mobility in healthy & sustainable cities" — an online training session led by Dr Qiumeng Li, on a grey background with the Urban Studies Foundation logo. Event details graphic showing date (29 September 2026), times across China, India, and the United Kingdom, online location via Zoom, language (English), and details of the session lead Dr Qiumeng Li (Assistant Professor, HKUST Guangzhou), described as part of the USF-funded Seminar Series Award project "Mapping opportunities for healthy and sustainable urban transitions in post-industrial cities." Grey background with the Urban Studies Foundation logo.
September 9, 2026 at 12:00 PM
urbanstudiesfoundation.org
📢 New open access publication by former #USFPostdoctoralResearchFellow Dr Syeda Jenifa Zahan in Antipode.

"The production of carcerality in state-led redevelopment of informal settlements in Delhi, India" 🇮🇳

🔗 zurl.co/rHN6A

#UrbanStudies #UrbanStudiesFoundation #India #Housing #USF
A light blue graphic with a "PAPER" badge in the top left corner. Large text in the center reads: "The production of everyday carcerality in state-led redevelopment of informal settlement in Delhi, India." The author's name, "Syeda Jenifa Zahan," is in the bottom left, and a right-pointing arrow is in the bottom right. A light blue graphic showing a thumbnail of the academic paper "The Production of Everyday Carcerality in State-Led Redevelopment of Informal Settlement in Delhi, India" from the journal Antipode. Below the paper thumbnail is a large quote: "The conceptual framing of everyday carcerality provokes questions on intimate yet often invisible interconnections among housing, homing, and carcerality in geographies that are not prison, yet are connected to the logics and logistics of the punitive state and its deepening entanglements with capitalist extraction of land and housing value."
September 7, 2026 at 3:09 PM
urbanstudiesfoundation.org
🆕 New #USFBlog post: "PRIVATEVICTIONS: Confronting the privatisation of evictions and building tenant power in Spain"

Dr Ana Santamarina on "PRIVATEVICTIONS", a USF Urban Urgencies project. 🇪🇸

🔗 Read here: zurl.co/Lkcdz
🔗 Learn more: zurl.co/yCLr3

#UrbanStudies #USF #UrbanUrgencies #Housing
USF Blog graphic for "PRIVATEVICTIONS: Confronting the privatisation of evictions and building tenant power in Spain" by Ana Santamarina, showing a large crowd of housing rights protesters wearing Sindicato de Inquilinas de Madrid t-shirts and carrying banners at a demonstration in Spain. Photo credit: Alberto Escudilla. Urban Studies Foundation logo in the top right corner. Quote graphic from the USF Blog post "PRIVATEVICTIONS", displaying the text: "Antisquatting companies have emerged as a still largely unexplored mechanism of housing dispossession. Hired by property owners, property managers, real-estate investors and, in some cases, large investment funds, they are used to empty buildings, recover possession outside or at the margins of formal judicial procedures and accelerate the revalorisation of housing assets." White text on a dark navy background with the Urban Studies Foundation logo.
September 4, 2026 at 1:00 PM
urbanstudiesfoundation.org
📚 New book by former #USFPostdoctoralResearchFellow Max Holleran and Samuel Holleran "Scattered Steel: The Afterlife of the World Trade Center" — how fragments of the Twin Towers became modern relics, scattered across fifty states and built into hundreds of local memorials. 🇺🇸

🔗 zurl.co/L6UwL

#USF
Book launch graphic for Scattered Steel: The Afterlife of the World Trade Center by Samuel Holleran and Max Holleran, displayed over a photograph of two rusted steel beams from the World Trade Center standing in an open landscape. Urban Studies Foundation logo in the top right corner. Book launch graphic showing the cover of Scattered Steel: The Afterlife of the World Trade Center by Samuel Holleran and Max Holleran, published by Cornell University Press, alongside the opening lines of the publisher's blurb describing how fragments of the Twin Towers became modern relics built into memorials across the United States. Displayed on a terracotta background with the Urban Studies Foundation logo.
September 2, 2026 at 12:00 PM
urbanstudiesfoundation.org
📢 New publication out!

"Who is a construction worker? Bureaucratic arbitrariness, entrepreneurial unions and performances of eligibility in Delhi" by former #USFPostdoctoralResearchFellow Dr Sanjeev Routray.

🔗 zurl.co/n6xtq

#UrbanStudies #UrbanStudiesFoundation #USF #LabourRights #India
Light grey background graphic with a black pill-shaped tag reading "PAPER" in the top left and the USF logo in the top right. Large bold text reads: "Who is a construction worker? Bureaucratic arbitrariness, entrepreneurial unions and performances of eligibility in Delhi." Author's name "Sanjeev Routray" and a right-pointing arrow appear at the bottom. Light grey background graphic displaying a preview of the academic article. Below the preview is a quote: "As the bureaucrats of labour boards arbitrarily pronounce themselves as authenticators and the union agents embrace an ethic of usefulness, the workers must systematically perform that they are genuine workers by deploying a wide variety of cultural and bodily tactics to prove their authenticity and claim their entitlements. In so doing, they deploy their speech-acts, comportments, physical attributes and bodily signs as evidence for their claims as worker-citizens."
August 31, 2026 at 1:00 PM
urbanstudiesfoundation.org
🆕 New #USFBlog post: "Listening to women's narratives of urban collapse in Tripoli, Lebanon"

Ms Joana Dabaj on "Urban collapse, care, and climate: Women's narratives of polycrises in Tripoli", a USF Urban Urgencies project.

🔗 Read here: zurl.co/hhn9O
🔗 Learn more: zurl.co/YgbFN

#USF #UrbanStudies
USF Blog graphic for "Listening to women's narratives of urban collapse in Tripoli, Lebanon" by Joana Dabaj, showing a woman in a blue abaya painting a mural on a wall in Tripoli. Photo credit: ©CatalyticAction & Ruwwad, photo by Tharaa Captan. Urban Studies Foundation logo in the top right corner. Quote graphic from the USF Blog post "Listening to women's narratives of urban collapse in Tripoli, Lebanon", displaying the text: "Rather than viewing women as passive recipients of assistance, the project seeks to recognise them as key urban actors and knowledge holders. Their experiences reveal not only the impacts of prolonged crises but also the everyday practices of care, adaptation, and solidarity that sustain families, neighbourhoods, and communities under extraordinary pressure." White text on a grey background with the USF logo.
August 25, 2026 at 12:00 PM
urbanstudiesfoundation.org
📚 C.P. Pow — Selected Essays | Free to download

This open access collection of ten of C.P. Pow's most impactful essays is free to download, produced by the #USF to honour the legacy of his contribution to urban studies.

🔗 Learn more and download the book: zurl.co/Vvmcd

#UrbanStudiesFoundation
Branded quote card from the Urban Studies Foundation featuring a photograph of the Sino-Singapore Tianjin Eco-city, showing apartment tower blocks and a tall abstract metal sculpture on a wide, empty boulevard. The quote reads: 'In many ways, the current fixation on the ecological city (shengtai chengshi) speaks to the multiple anxieties, aspirations, and ambitions of the Chinese state's ecological civilization project that aims to build a harmonious and sustainable society without compromising economic growth.' Attributed to C.P. Pow's essay 'Building a Harmonious Society through Greening: Ecological Civilization and Aesthetic Governmentality in China'.
August 21, 2026 at 12:00 PM
urbanstudiesfoundation.org
📢 Book launch: Modelos urbanos en movimiento: geografías, actores y agendas políticas en América Latina (Urban models in motion: geographies, actors, and political agendas in Latin America).

🗓️ 26 August 2026, 13:30 CDMX
🗣️ In Spanish
🔗 zurl.co/KzAAx
ID: 263 836 872 676 836 | Passcode: oV7SV6ra
Event graphic for the virtual book launch of Modelos urbanos en movimiento (Urban models in motion) by Guillermo Jajamovich, Isabel Duque Franco, and Ryan Anders Whitney, on a light blue background with the Urban Studies Foundation logo. Event details graphic for the Modelos urbanos en movimiento book launch showing date (26 August 2026, 13:30–15:30 CDMX), online location via Microsoft Teams, language (Spanish), and panel members: Paola Jirón (Universidad de Chile), Gabriel Silvestre (Newcastle University), and Sergio Montero (University of Toronto). Light blue background with the Urban Studies Foundation logo.
August 14, 2026 at 1:00 PM
urbanstudiesfoundation.org
📢 New publication by former #USFInternationalFellow Dr Basirat Ashabi Oyalowo in the Urban Studies Journal.

"Spatial justice and resilience: Unpacking community responses to lockdown policies in Lagos"

🔗 Read the article: zurl.co/fJFFX

#UrbanStudies #UrbanStudiesFoundation #USF #SpatialJustice
Dark blue title graphic with the USF logo, featuring white text reading: "Spatial justice and resilience: Unpacking community responses to lockdown policies in Lagos," authored by Basirat Ashabi Oyalowo. Dark blue slide featuring a preview of the Urban Studies journal article by Basirat Ashabi Oyalowo. Text below reads: "A look at how communities in Lagos responded to the 2020 COVID-19 lockdown — and why reactive resilience alone is not enough to correct long-standing disadvantages without a spatial justice framework to drive pre-crisis transformative change."
August 7, 2026 at 9:00 AM
urbanstudiesfoundation.org
📚 C.P. Pow — Selected Essays | Free to download

This open access collection of ten of C.P. Pow's most impactful essays is free to download, produced by the #USF to honour the legacy of his contribution to urban studies.

🔗 Learn more and download the book: zurl.co/QFMOj

#UrbanStudiesFoundation
Branded quote card from the Urban Studies Foundation featuring a photograph of Sentosa Cove, Singapore, showing a luxury waterfront tower and a motor yacht on the water. The quote reads: 'Beneath the gleaming transnational landscapes of privilege in Sentosa Cove, a grimmer reality prevails. [...] Growing socioeconomic disparities are being managed by creating highly privatized and customised consumption spaces for global elites.' Attributed to C.P. Pow's essay 'Living it up: Super-rich enclave and transnational elite urbanism in Singapore'.
August 5, 2026 at 12:00 PM
urbanstudiesfoundation.org
🎥 Screenings continue: "Territory" by former #USFInternationalFellow Dr Telma Hoyler

"Territory" follows a left-wing candidate navigating politics on São Paulo's urban periphery. Supported by a #USFKnowledgeMobilisationAward.

▶️ Trailer: zurl.co/iQL8B
🔗 Info: zurl.co/eL7Hr

#UrbanStudies #USF
Documentary graphic for Territory by Telma Hoyler, showing silhouetted figures walking on a grainy, textured background with the text: "Through Geraldo's story, Territory explores how religion, crime, and entrepreneurial values are reshaping people's sense of democracy." Urban Studies Foundation logo in the top right corner. Image credit: Territory. Documentary graphic showing the official poster for Territory, a film by Telma Hoyler, alongside a description of the film's protagonist Geraldo — a left-wing Workers' Party candidate navigating São Paulo's 2024 municipal elections on the city's southern periphery. Displayed on a warm ochre background with the Urban Studies Foundation logo.
August 3, 2026 at 10:00 AM
urbanstudiesfoundation.org
🎉 Introducing six new Urban Urgencies projects by the Urban Studies Foundation.

Six rapid-response projects tackling housing precarity, urban heat, food insecurity, climate risk, social withdrawal, and industrial soil legacies — each with a non-academic partner.

🔗 Read more: zurl.co/NUoOC

#USF
USF graphic: 'Introducing six new Urban Urgencies projects', over a photo of a rent-strike protest in Madrid.
July 30, 2026 at 12:00 PM
urbanstudiesfoundation.org
📖 New #USFblog guest post by Julia Strutz and Zena Asswad: "Studying cities at war: The destruction of knowledge infrastructures and exclusions"

👉 Read the blog post: zurl.co/8lXXT
📚 Access the publication: zurl.co/EDM5X
ℹ️ Learn more: zurl.co/QDjcV

#UrbanStudies #UrbanStudiesFoundation #USF
Title slide for the USF blog post "Studying cities at war: The destruction of knowledge infrastructures and exclusions" by Julia Strutz and Zena Asswad, over a dark green aerial satellite image of a city with a river running through it. USF logo in top right corner. Quote slide on a dark green background reading: "Scholars were not only documenting violence; they were living through it. The emotional labour of conducting research while protecting families, navigating censorship, or surviving bombardment became inseparable from the intellectual labour of analysis. Academic networks transformed into systems of collective care, sustaining researchers who were otherwise isolated or endangered." USF logo in top right corner.
July 24, 2026 at 2:15 PM
urbanstudiesfoundation.org
📚 C.P. Pow — Selected Essays | Free to download

We're pleased to share this curated collection of ten of C.P. Pow's most impactful essays, produced by the #USF to honour the legacy of his contribution to urban studies.

🔗 Learn more and download the book: zurl.co/Cgyho

#UrbanStudiesFoundation
Quote from the essay “Sensing visceral urban politics and metabolic exclusion in a Chinese neighbourhood” by CP Pow, on a background of a photo of a Chinese urban neighbourhood, the the USF logo in the top left corner: “Insofar as the production of space is intimately bound up with the bodily senses, it would be reasonable to posit that the politics of space is also at the same time a politics of the senses.”
July 22, 2026 at 3:40 PM
urbanstudiesfoundation.org
🆕 #USFBlog: "Two decades of southern urban theory: Notes beyond informality"
Dr Sushmita Pati, Dr Anwesha Ghosh, Dr Mukta Naik, and Dr Chandrima Mukhopadhyay on a USF-funded workshop in Delhi examining southern urbanism as a subfield: its tensions, its evolution, and its limits.

🔗 zurl.co/VesaG
USF Blog graphic for "Two decades of southern urban theory: Notes beyond informality", displayed over a photograph of a busy street scene in an Indian city with people, stray dogs, and a cow. Photo credit: Gayatri Malhotra via Unsplash. Urban Studies Foundation logo in the top right corner. Quote graphic from the USF Blog post "Two decades of southern urban theory", displaying the text: "The workshop unveiled an anxiety among urban studies scholars about what 'southern urbanism' means, who it speaks for, and whether it risks replicating the very universalisms it seeks to contest." White text on a dark blue background with the Urban Studies Foundation logo.
July 20, 2026 at 12:00 PM
urbanstudiesfoundation.org
📢 New open access publication by #USF Writing Urban India Fellow Dhiren Swain in Contemporary South Asia.

"Negotiating the urban margins: 'committees' and in situ slum titling in Odisha's Basti settlements"

🔗 Read the article: zurl.co/BkobX
🔗 Learn more: zurl.co/rN84X

#UrbanStudiesFoundation
Paper graphic for "Negotiating the urban margins: 'committees' and in situ slum titling in Odisha's Basti settlements" by Dhiren Swain, displayed in large text on a light grey background with the Urban Studies Foundation logo. Paper graphic showing the first page of "Negotiating the urban margins: 'committees' and in situ slum titling in Odisha's Basti settlements" by Dhiren Swain, published open access in Contemporary South Asia, alongside the opening sentences of the abstract describing how marginalised groups in Odisha assert agency over land rights despite exclusion from state-led governance, on a light grey background with the Urban Studies Foundation logo.
July 17, 2026 at 12:00 PM
urbanstudiesfoundation.org
🔔 USF Blog!

"Public art for whom?": Creativity and urban futures in Delhi

Former #USFInternationalFellow Dr Nian Paul on how state-led public art in Delhi reshapes who gets to access and belong in urban space. 🇮🇳

Read the guest post 👉 zurl.co/a2vfC

#UrbanStudes #USF #SpatialJustice
USF Blog banner titled 'Public art for whom?': Creativity and urban futures in Delhi, over a photo of a colourful mural depicting a flying Hindu deity figure on a flyover underpass wall in Delhi. Credit: Nian Paul. Quote on grey background reading: 'co-production is a deeply political act. While it holds potential for democratic engagement, state-led cultural regeneration often commodifies aspects of co-production, concealing deeper structural exclusions.' USF Blog branding in top corners.
July 15, 2026 at 12:00 PM