About

Theme 2014-15   The  Margins of the City

The city is a space made of, and build around, heterogeneous margins. Borders, both empirical and conceptual, divide the city's centre from its periphery; trace the contours of zones of access on the basis of income, race, and gender; split the city into private and public zones. Some borders segregate (the poor from the rich) and others isolate (the rich from the poor). The urban life along the borders and inside the margins often does not conform to the idea of the productive urban citizen. The margins are the spaces of minority groups, migrants, homeless deviants, illegals.

The seminar explores urban marginality from a variety of perspectives – political and economic exclusion, marginalisation on the basis of race, ethnicity, gender, and religion, to name just a few – in order to question how these margins are produced, sustained, and reproduced in contemporary cities, both in the Global North and South. It aims to challenge the canonical understanding of life at the margin in order to cast a new light on what we consider to be, and what we know of, contemporary urban marginalisation.

 

Conveners

Conveners

Hanna Baumann (Department of Architecture)
Michele Lancione (Urban Studies Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Geography)
Farhan Samanani (Department of Anthropology)
 

Previous conveners
Kathryn Schoefert (Department of History and Philosophy of Science) 

 

Faculty Advisors

Dr Wendy Pullan (Director of the Martin Centre for Architectural Studies and Urbanism, Department of Architecture)
Dr Tatiana A Thieme (University Lecturer in Human Geography, Fellow and Director od Studies of Fitzwilliam College)
 

Faculty Advisor (previous years)

Professor Andrew Webber (Professor of Modern German and Comparative Culture, Head of Department, Dept of German and Dutch)

Past events

City Seminar
A crisis in urban creativity and local distinctiveness?…
29 Jan 2008 5:15pm - 7:00pm, CRASSH
Metropolis: temporary arts events as alternative strategies for urban public domains
12 Feb 2008 5:30pm - 6:30pm, CRASSH
Sound and the City – Interdisciplinary Perspectives
22 Feb 2008 All day, CRASSH
Sui-vellance; social bonding through spatial bondage
26 Feb 2008 5:30pm - 6:30pm, CRASSH
The Latent World of the Contemporary City
11 Mar 2008 5:30pm - 6:30pm, CRASSH
Screening of “Man with a Movie Camera” (Dzviga Vertov, 1929)
6 May 2008 5:30pm - 7:30pm, CRASSH, 17 Mill Lane
The Future of Venice
20 May 2008 5:30pm - 7:30pm, CRASSH, 17 Mill Lane
16th-C Damascus: Ottoman rule and the development of a provincial city
3 Jun 2008 5:30pm - 7:30pm, CRASSH, 17 Mill Lane
City Seminar
3 Nov 2009 5:00pm - 7:00pm, CRASSH 17 Mill Lane
City Seminar
17 Nov 2009 5:00pm - 7:00pm, CRASSH 17 Mill Lane
Prof Caroline Humphrey: ” Odessa: pogroms and the Built City”
1 Dec 2009 5:00pm - 7:00pm, CRASSH 17 Mill Lane
The Pacific Wall: Los Angeles and Cinema after 1968
12 Jan 2010 5:15pm - 7:00pm, CRASSH 17 Mill Lane, Seminar room
Deconstructing Jerusalem and Exile
26 Jan 2010 5:15pm - 7:00pm, CRASSH 17 Mill Lane
Small Talk, Big Issues: Art and Beirut
16 Feb 2010 5:15pm - 7:00pm, CRASSH 17 Mill Lane
Professor Nigel Thrift: Life World Inc.
23 Feb 2010 5:15pm - 7:00pm, CRASSH 17 Mill Lane
The Unaccountable City
9 Mar 2010 5:15pm - 7:00pm, CRASSH 17 Mill Lane
Did Walls Really Come Down? Contemporary B/ordering? Walls in Europe
20 Apr 2010 5:15pm - 7:00pm, CRASSH 17 Mill Lane, Cambridge
Dr Hazem Abu Orf (Palestine): Urban Informality in Divided Cities
4 May 2010 5:15pm - 7:00pm, CRASSH, 17 Mill Lane, Cambridge
Dr Yael Navarro-Yashin (Cambridge): Abjected Spaces: Débris of War and its Affects
18 May 2010 5:15pm - 7:00pm, CRASSH, 17 Mill Lane, Cambridge
‘Mongrel City’: Cosmopolitan Neighbourliness in a Delhi Squatter Settlement.
5 Oct 2010 5:00pm - 7:00pm, CRASSH, 17 Mill Lane, Cambridge

Ayona Datta (Lecturer, Cities Programme, London School of Economics)

Space, Place And Group-Making In and Out of the City
19 Oct 2010 5:00pm - 7:00pm, CRASSH, 17 Mill Lane, Cambridge

Professor Loic Wacquant (Department of Sociology, University of California, Berkeley)

Conflict and Coexistence in Levantine Cities
16 Nov 2010 5:00pm - 7:00pm, CRASSH, 17 Mill Lane, Cambridge

Philip Mansel (Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and the Institute of Historical Research, University of London)

Cities as Battlespace: The New Military Urbanism
25 Nov 2010 6:00pm - 7:00pm, CRASSH, 17 Mill Lane, Cambridge

Professor Stephen Graham (School of Architecture, Newcastle University) Keynote lecture.

Memory and the Struggle over Geography in a Jewish-Arab ‘Mixed City’
18 Jan 2011 5:15pm - 7:00pm, CRASSH, 17 Mill Lane, Cambridge

Dr Haim Yacobi (Marie Curie Visiting Fellow, Department of Architecture, University of Cambridge)

Nostalgia and the City
1 Feb 2011 5:00pm - 7:00pm, CRASSH, 17 Mill Lane, Cambridge

Elizabeth Wilson

Place, Democracy and the City: an Experiment in Revolutionary Venezuela
15 Feb 2011 5:15pm - 7:00pm, CRASSH, 17 Mill Lane, Cambridge

Professor Doreen Massey (Geography, Fac of Social Sciences, Open University)

Filming the Phantoms of Berlin: Christian Petzold’s ‘Gespenster’ (‘Ghosts’, 2005)
1 Mar 2011 5:15pm - 7:00pm, CRASSH, 17 Mill Lane, Cambridge

Professor Andrew J. Webber (Department of German and Dutch, University of Cambridge)

Lhasa: Streets with Memories
15 Mar 2011 5:15pm - 7:00pm, CRASSH, 17 Mill Lane, Cambridge

Robert Barnett (Director of the Modern Tibetan Studies Program, Columbia University)

City Seminar Workshop
13 May 2011 12:30pm - 6:15pm, CRASSH, 17 Mill Lane, Cambridge

Open to all but booking online is required.

Cities of Power
11 Oct 2011 5:00pm - 7:00pm, CRASSH, 17 Mill Lane, Cambridge

Prof. Göran Therborn (Cambridge)

Contested Spaces and Urban Citizenship in India
25 Oct 2011 5:00pm - 7:00pm, King's College, Rylands Room

Romola Sanyal (Newcastle). Venue: Rylands Room, King's College

On the Plaza: Post-Soviet Urban Ensembles
8 Nov 2011 5:00pm - 7:00pm, CRASSH, 17 Mill Lane, Cambridge

Owen Hatherley (Author)

How Cities Cope with Obduracy and Vulnerability
22 Nov 2011 5:00pm - 7:00pm, CRASSH, 17 Mill Lane, Cambridge

Anique Hommels (Maastricht)

Kinshasa on Film: Between Dystopia and Utopia
31 Jan 2012 4:15pm - 7:00pm, CRASSH, Seminar room SG1

Filip De Boeck (KU Leuven) and Koen Van Synghel . Part of the City Seminar series. NB: This event will begin at 4.15pm

Wounded Cities
7 Feb 2012 5:00pm - 7:00pm, CRASSH

Dr Karen E. Till (National University of Ireland Maynooth).

Urban Reflections – Filmic Narratives of Place, Planning and Change
21 Feb 2012 5:00pm - 7:00pm, CRASSH, Seminar room

Mark Tewdwr-Jones (UCL Bartlett)

Telescopic Urbanism
6 Mar 2012 5:00pm - 7:00pm, CRASSH

Prof Ash Amin (Cambridge)

Power Tower: Tatlin and Petrograd, London and Kapoor?
29 May 2012 5:00pm - 7:00pm, CRASSH, Seminar room S1- 1st Floor

Professor John Milner (Courtauld Institute of Art) . NB Seminar room S1- 1st Floor*

An Infrastructure for Freedom?: Common Things and Res Publica in a Contemporary Russian City
16 Oct 2012 5:00pm - 7:00pm, CRASSH, Seminar room SG1, Ground floor

Dr Oleg Kharkhordin (Political Science and Sociology, European University at St Petersburg)

“A Peculiar Band of Thugs”: Construction Workers and the Construction of France
30 Oct 2012 5:00pm - 7:00pm, CRASSH, Seminar room SG1, Ground floor

Jacob Paskins (Research Fellow at Girton College )

Designing for Evolution and Posterity: The London Olympic Legacy Masterplan
13 Nov 2012 5:00pm - 7:00pm, CRASSH, Seminar room SG1, Ground floor

Dr Juliet Davis (LSE Cities, London School of Economics and Political Science)

The Urbanism of Exception: Not-To-Design and the Paradoxes of Informalities
27 Nov 2012 5:00pm - 7:00pm, CRASSH, Seminar room SG1, Ground floor

Dr Camillo Boano (Senior Lecturer and Course Director of MSc Building and Urban Design in Development, Co-Director of the UCL Urban Lab, The Bartlett Development Planning Unit, University College London)

Producing Mostar. A Lefebvrian Investigation of a Contested City
29 Jan 2013 5:00pm - 7:00pm, CRASSH, Seminar room SG1, Ground floor

Dr Giulia Carabelli (Queen's University Belfast)

Ordinary Topologies: Everyday Life in and out of Ramallah
12 Feb 2013 5:00pm - 7:00pm, CRASSH, Seminar room SG1, Ground floor

Dr. Christopher Harker (Geography, Durham University)

Fluid Cities: Circulation and the Politics of Mobility
26 Feb 2013 5:00pm - 7:00pm, CRASSH, Seminar room S1, First Floor

David Pinder (Lecturer in Department of Geography, Queen Mary, University of London).

Urban Politics, Learning, and Inequality: Informal Sanitation in Mumbai
12 Mar 2013 5:00pm - 7:00pm, CRASSH, Seminar room SG1, Ground floor

Dr Colin McFarlane (Geography, Durham University)

POSTPONED to 21 May: A Tale of Four Cities: Does Ethnic Diversity Lead to Urban Conflicts?
23 Apr 2013 All day, CRASSH

Please note that this event has been postponed to 21 May.

CANCELLED-Cities for People/Film
7 May 2013 5:00pm - 7:00pm, CRASSH, Seminar room SG2, Ground floor

Cancelled

A Tale of Four Cities: Does Ethnic Diversity Lead to Urban Conflicts?
21 May 2013 5:00pm - 7:00pm, CRASSH, Seminar room SG2, Ground floor

Radu Carciumaru (Lecturer, South Asia Institute, University of Heidelberg) and Sherrill Stroschein (Senior Lecturer in Politics, UCL). NB Seminar room SG2*

City Seminar. Theme 2013-14
20 Oct 2013 5:30pm - 7:00pm, CRASSH

Mobilising Cities

Public Health Work in African Cities
22 Oct 2013 5:00pm - 7:00pm, CRASSH, Seminar room SG1, Ground floor

Ruth Prince (Cambridge), Noemi Tousignant (Cambridge) at City Seminar

NB Seminar starts at 5.00pm today* 

London ‘Super Rich’ Neighbourhoods
5 Nov 2013 5:30pm - 7:30pm, CRASSH, Seminar room S1, First floor

Roger Burrows (Goldsmiths, London) at City Seminar
NB *Seminar room S1, First floor.

Mobilising Shack Dwellers in Post-Apartheid South Africa
12 Nov 2013 5:00pm - 7:00pm, CRASSH Seminar room SG2, Ground floor

S’bu Zikode (Founder of Abahlali baseMjondolo)

NB *Seminar room SG2, Ground floor, 5.00PM

Istanbul and the Grassroots
19 Nov 2013 5:30pm - 7:30pm, CRASSH, Seminar room SG1, Ground floor

Martin Schwegmann (Humboldt, Berlin) at City Seminar

Gated/Gating Community: The Settlements Complex in the West Bank
26 Nov 2013 5:30pm - 7:30pm, CRASSH Seminar room SG2, Ground floor
The New Urban Question
14 Jan 2014 5:30pm - 7:30pm, CRASSH Seminar room SG1, Ground floor

Andy Merrifield (Cambridge) at City Seminar

Globalisation along the Back Roads
28 Jan 2014 5:30pm - 7:30pm, CRASSH Seminar room SG1, Ground floor

Caroline Knowles (Goldsmiths) at City Seminar

Performance, Power and Place of the Hustle Economy in Nairobi, Kenya
11 Feb 2014 5:30pm - 7:30pm, CRASSH Seminar room SG1, Ground floor

Tatiana Thieme (Cambridge) at City Seminar
 

Informal Urban Citizenship in Buenos Aires: Migration, Informality and Visions for a just City
25 Feb 2014 5:30pm - 7:30pm, CRASSH Seminar room SG1, Ground floor

Tanja Bastia (Manchester) at City Seminar
 

Theorising Cities Now
4 Mar 2014 5:30pm - 7:30pm, CRASSH, Seminar room SG2, Ground floor

Jennifer Robinson (UCL) at City Seminar

Mapping Urban Spatial Practices and Cultures of Dissent in Lahore and London
11 Mar 2014 5:30pm - 7:30pm, CRASSH Seminar room SG1, Ground floor

Nishat Awan (Sheffield) at City Seminar
 

Intimate City: Violence,Gender,Ordinary Life in Delhi Slums
22 Apr 2014 5:30pm - 7:00pm, CRASSH Seminar room SG1

Ayona Datta (Leeds) at City seminar
 

(Im)mobilizing Bangkok: motorcycle taxi drivers and street protest
30 Apr 2014 5:30pm - 6:30pm, CRASSH (S1) 1st Floor

Claudio Sopranzetti (Oxford) at CRASSH

CANCELLED-Refugees and the Urban Poor (City Seminar)
6 May 2014 5:30pm - 7:00pm, CRASSH Seminar room SG1
Living the Security City: Navigating Karachi’s Enclaves
20 May 2014 5:30pm - 7:00pm, CRASSH Seminar room SG1

Sobia A. Kaker (LSE/Newcastle) and Postgraduate Networking  at City seminar

Revanchist Sanitisation or Coercive Care?
20 Oct 2014 5:30pm - 7:30pm, Room SG1, Alison Richard Building

Sarah Johnsen  (Heriot-Watt University) at City Seminar

Refugees and the Urban Poor: In Two Palestinian Enclaves
3 Nov 2014 5:30pm - 7:30pm, Room SG1, Alison Richard Building

Silvia Pasquetti (Cambridge) at City Seminar

Participatory Sonic Arts in Rio and Belfast
24 Nov 2014 1:30pm - 3:30pm, Room SG1, Alison Richard Building (NB different day and time)

Pedro Rebelo (Belfast) joint event City Seminar and Civic Matter

Relocating Urban Asylum
1 Dec 2014 5:30pm - 7:30pm, Room SG1, Alison Richard Building

Jonny Darling  (Manchester) at City Seminar

Territorial Stigmatization and Advanced Urban Marginality
21 Jan 2015 5:30pm - 7:00pm, Room S1, 1st floor Alison Richard Building (NB different date and room*)

Tom Slater (Edinburgh) -City Seminar
NB different day, time and room.

CANCELLED-Evacuate
26 Jan 2015 5:30pm - 7:30pm, Room SG1, Alison Richard Building

City Seminar
 

Skateboarding and the City
9 Feb 2015 5:30pm - 7:30pm, Room SG1, Alison Richard Building

Iain Borden (UCL)
Joint event Civic Matter -City Seminar

An Urban Perspective on State Fragility in Lebanon
23 Feb 2015 5:30pm - 7:30pm, Room SG1, Alison Richard Building

Sara Fregonese (Birmingham) ~City Seminar
 

Militant Masks: Youth and Insecurity in the Niger Delta
9 Mar 2015 5:30pm - 7:30pm, Room SG1, Alison Richard Building

David Pratten (Oxford)
Joint event with Civic Matter ~City Seminar
 

Welfare, Neighbourhood and New Geographies of Diversity
18 May 2015 5:30pm - 7:30pm, Room SG1, Alison Richard Building.

Mette Berg & Ben Gidley (Oxford)~ City Seminar

CANCELLED-Youth and Modes of Operating in Abidjan.
1 Jun 2015 5:30pm - 7:30pm, Room SG1, Alison Richard Building.

AbdouMaliq Simone (Goldsmiths) ~ City Seminar

Urban Research at Cambridge: City Seminar Workshop
4 Jun 2015 12:30pm - 5:00pm, Room SG2, Alison Richard Building.

Workshop ~ City Seminar

CENTRE FOR RESEARCH IN THE ARTS, SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES

Tel: +44 1223 766886
Email enquiries@crassh.cam.ac.uk