Re-thinking the spatial politics of global urbanization processes: The contested relationalities of port cities past and present
Seminar Series
Theme
This seminar series aims to contribute to debates around global urbanization, decolonialization and the (urban) political by using the contested relationalities of port-cities in both the past and present as distinctive entry points into the exclusions and spatial politics of global urbanization processes. The series will historicize, situate and politicize debates around global urbanization by tracing different aspects of the contested trajectories and interconnections of port-cities. Having historically served as key nodes in world-making processes driven by the forces of capital and empire, port-cities are today re-ordered again as part of extensive migration flows and the mega infrastructure projects and the intricate logistics networks that shape and maintain contemporary global urbanization. Simultaneously, their articulation with maritime networks and the flows of people and ideas they facilitate has diachronically posited port-cities as key sites for negotiating racialized relations, enabling multi-ethnic encounters and trans-local connections, as well as the forging of different forms of solidarity, political agency and antagonism. Bringing together an inter-disciplinary and international group of scholar, practitioners and activists the series will host three workshops – in Liverpool, Thessaloniki and Glasgow – which will provide distinctive cuts through which we can better grasp and theorize the spatial politics and global dynamics of urbanization processes as well as decolonize geography and urban studies curricula.
Format
The seminar series will feature three two-day workshops in Liverpool, Thessaloniki and Glasgow which will each bring together international and inter-disciplinary scholars through a hybrid format comprising of both in-person and online participation. Each workshop will address a key thematic corresponding to one of the series’ objectives and will consist of six sessions focusing on important aspects of the contested trajectories of port-cities to unpack the spatial politics of urbanization. The Liverpool and Thessaloniki workshops will comprise of inter-disciplinary academic engagements and the Glasgow workshop will develop novel resources to decolonize the geography and urban studies curricula in collaboration with non-academic practitioners and activists.
Location & Dates
Location: Thessaloniki
Date: 26, 27 May 2022
The politics of infrastructure and emancipatory political Infrastructures
This event will foreground the spatial politics of infrastructure as a key terrain through which global urbanization processes are being shaped and contested by multiple actors at multiple scales. The event will situate port-cities as key nodes in infrastructure politics that enable global flows and animate the forces of capital and ‘empire’ and explore how the exclusionary ordering of the urban is contested through multi-ethnic encounters, solidarities and political infrastructures.
Location: Liverpool
Date: TBA
The spatial politics of port-cities, maritime labour struggles, and decolonization
This event will situate port-cities as key sites which have been central to processes of decolonization in both the past and present. It will situate maritime labour as a particular site of antagonism over the racialized and classed processes of decolonization, providing a lens on forms of subaltern urban politics shaped by the multi-ethnic spaces brought together in different areas of port-cities.
Location: Glasgow
Date: TBA
Port-Cities and Decolonising Geography and Urban Studies Curricula
This event will draw together the insights of the first two workshops on the spatial politics of port-cities using these as a basis to produce resources to help decolonize curricula in geography and urban studies at both school and university level. This will be done in dialogue with activist groups involved in struggles around memory in port-cities such as Cardiff and Liverpool and through collaboration with the RACE group of the RGS-IBG and the ‘decolonising geography education group’ – based in secondary schools in Britain.
Team
Team
Dr Lazaros Karaliotas
Lead organiser, Lecturer in Urban Geography, University of Glasgow
Dr Andy Davies
Senior Lecturer in Human Geography, University of Liverpool
Dr Matina Kapsali
Post-Doctoral Research Fellow, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
Team member:
Dr David Featherstone
Reader in Human Geography, University of Glasgow
Host institutions
School of Architecture, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (Greece)
School of Environmental Sciences, University of Liverpool (UK)
School of Geographical and Earth Sciences, University of Glasgow (UK)
