Struggles in the city

In this episode, I talk to Mori Ram, Lecturer in Politics of the Global South at Newcastle University about urban apartheid in Jerusalem. Our discussion draws for the most part on the chapter written by our guest, Mori Ram, and Professor Haim Yacobi and titled “Neo-Apartheid Jerusalem: Palestine/Israel and the Question of Urban Apartheid”.

Mori’s recommended resources:

• Clarno, A. (2019). Neoliberal Apartheid: Palestine/Israel and South Africa after 1994. University of Chicago Press.

• Jabareen, Y. (2017). The right to space production and the right to necessity: Insurgent versus legal rights of Palestinians in Jerusalem. Planning Theory, 16(1), 6-31. https://doi.org/10.1177/1473095215591675

• Shtern, M., & Rokem, J. (2023). Towards urban geopolitics of encounter: Spatial mixing in contested jerusalem. Geopolitics, 28(5), 1710-1734. https://doi.org/10.1080/14650045.2021.1926992

• Yacobi, H., & Milner, E. (2022). Planning, Land Ownership, and Settler Colonialism in Israel/Palestine. Journal of Palestine studies, 51(2), 43-56. https://doi.org/10.1080/0377919X.2022.2040321

Mori’s highlighted work:

• Ram, M., & Yacobi, H. (2023). Zionism in a white coat: Israel’s geopolitics of medical aid development assistance of health to Africa. British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, 50(4), 825–844. https://doi.org/10.1080/13530194.2022.2038085

• Yacobi, H., & Ram, M. (2023). Neo-Apartheid Jerusalem. In M. Griffiths & M. Joronen (Eds.), Encountering Palestine: Un/making Spaces of Colonial Violence (pp. 149-175). University of Nebraska Press. https://www.jstor.org/stable/jj.8180963

Thank you to Elmeri Tommiska for the music and to Jyri Väisänen for the post-production assistance.

In this episode, I talk to Yecid Ortega (Queen’s University Belfast) about his ongoing research project on “Soundscapes of the diver[city]”. Yecid talks about the conceptual framework and methodology guiding his work as he examines the connections

Yecid’s project “Soundscapes of the diver[city]”:

•Website project: https://www.soundscapesofthecity.uk/

•“Belfast: Sounds of the Night 2023”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_ofr-Q2NMA

Yecid’s recommended resources:

•Lefebvre, H. (2012). From the production of space. In J. Collins & A. Nisbet (Eds.), Theatre and performance design (pp. 81-84). Routledge.

•Lefebvre, H. (2013). Rhythmanalysis: Space, time and everyday life. Bloomsbury Publishing.

•Pink, S. (2015). Doing sensory ethnography. Sage.

•Smith, L. T. (2019). Decolonizing research: Indigenous storywork as methodology. Bloomsbury Publishing.

•Wilson, S. (2020). Research is ceremony: Indigenous research methods. Fernwood publishing.

Yecid’s highlighted work:

•Ortega, Y. (2023). Symbolic annihilation: processes influencing English language policy and teaching practice. Critical Inquiry in Language Studies, 1-23. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15427587.2023.2215361

•Ortega, Y. (2023). Charlas y Comidas: Humanising focus groups and interviews. Qualitative Research https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/14687941231176947

Thank you to Elmeri Tommiska for the music and to Jyri Väisänen for the post-production assistance.

In this episode, I talk to Tuomo Hiippala, Associate Professor in English Language and Digital Humanities at the University of Helsinki (Finland) about languages in cities. We approach that

Tuomo’s recommended resources:

Tuomo’s highlighted work:

Thank you to Elmeri Tommiska for the music and post-production assistance.

In this episode, I talk to Derek Ruez, Academy Research Fellow at the University of Tampere (Finland). Derek’s current research project examines the politics of migration in Nordic queer spaces with a focus on two cities, Helsinki and Copenhagen. In this podcast’s episode we talk about queer spaces in cities, discussing what it means that space has historically been produced as heterosexual and heteronormative, and how people with different practices have had to carve out their own spaces.

Derek’s recommended resources:

Ali, A. (2022). Warming up narratives of community: queer kinship and emotional exile. Intersections. East European Journal of Society and Politics, 8(4), 10-24. https://doi.org/10.17356/ieejsp.v8i4.1014

Boussalem, A. (2022). A place where there is no need to explain: LGBTQ Muslims, collective disidentification and queer space in Brussels, Belgium. Social & Cultural Geography, 1-18. https://doi.org/10.1080/14649365.2022.2083667

Brown, G., & Browne, K. (eds.). (2016). The Routledge Research Companion to Geographies of Sex and Sexualities. Routledge.

Oswin, N. (2008). Critical geographies and the uses of sexuality: Deconstructing queer space. Progress in Human Geography, 32(1), 89-103. https://doi.org/10.1177/0309132507085213

Oswin, N. (2019). Global city futures: Desire and development in Singapore. University of Georgia Press.

Rosenberg, R. D. (2023). Geographies of Hegemonic Gay Masculinity: Interplays of Trans and Racialized In/Exclusions in the Gay Village of Toronto. Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 1-18. https://doi.org/10.1080/24694452.2023.2211141

Special issue on Placing LGBTQ+ urban activisms (edited by Alison Bain and Julie Podmore), published in Urban Studies https://journals.sagepub.com/toc/usj/58/7

Derek’s highlighted work:

Ruez, D., & Cockayne, D. (2021). Feeling otherwise: Ambivalent affects and the politics of critique in geography. Dialogues in Human Geography, 11(1), 88-107. https://doi.org/10.1177/2043820621995617

Ruez, D. (2017). “I never felt targeted as an Asian… until I went to a gay pub”: Sexual racism and the aesthetic geographies of the bad encounter. Environment and Planning, 49(4), 893-910. https://doi.org/10.1177/0308518X16680817

Thank you to Elmeri Tommiska for the music and post-production assistance.

In this episode, I talk to ⁠Shirley Nieuwland⁠, independent researcher and consultant, about urban tourism and sustainability. Shirley has written her

Shirley’s recommended resources:

- Rotmans, J. (2021). Omarm de chaos. De Geus.

- Milano, C., Novelli, M., & Cheer, J. M. (2019). Overtourism and degrowth: A social movements perspective. Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 27(12), 1857-1875. ⁠https://doi.org/10.1080/09669582.2019.1650054⁠

- Raworth, K. (2017). Doughnut economics: seven ways to think like a 21st-century economist. Chelsea Green Publishing.

- “Bye Bye Barcelona”, documentary available on Youtube: ⁠https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdXcFChRpmI⁠

Shirley’s highlighted work:

- Nieuwland, S., Versloot, E., & van der Zee, E. (2022). The Rotterdam way: a new take on urban tourism management. In J. van der Borg (Ed.), A Research Agenda for Urban Tourism (pp. 127-142). Edward Elgar Publishing. ⁠https://doi.org/10.4337/9781789907407.00014⁠

- Nieuwland, S., & Lavanga, M. (2020). The consequences of being ‘the Capital of Cool’. Creative entrepreneurs and the sustainable development of creative tourism in the urban context of Rotterdam. Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 29(6), 926-943. ⁠https://doi.org/10.1080/09669582.2020.1841780⁠

Thank you to Elmeri Tommiska for the music and post-production assistance.

In this episode, I talk to Julia Martínez-Ariño, Assistant Professor of Sociology of Religion at the University of Groningen (the Netherlands) about religion in cities. Julia’s research focuses on religion and secularism, and the way they materialize in everyday urban settings. In her book, “Urban Secularism: Negotiating Religious Diversity in Europe”, Julia discusses the messy and multilayered daily deployment of secularism in French cities.

Julia’s recommended readings:

Julia’s highlighted work:

Thank you to Elmeri Tommiska for the music and post-production assistance.

In this episode, I talk to Delia Dumitrica (Erasmus University Rotterdam, the Netherlands) about the way the nation is represented, or flagged, in cities, and how that is often done in ways that are mundane or taken for granted.

Delia’s research focuses on protest communication, digital activism and the discursive construction of the political functions of new media. In addition to this, she has worked on everyday and banal forms of nationalism. You can read Delia’s work on the visual representations of nations in cities here.

Delia’s recommended readings:

Delia’s work on the visual representations of nations in cities:

Thank you to Elmeri Tommiska for the music and post-production assistance.

In this episode, I talk with Isabel Awad (Erasmus University Rotterdam, the Netherlands) about what makes cities such an interesting venue to examine and what they can help us understand.

Isabel is part of the Vital Cities and Citizens network at Erasmus University Rotterdam for which she is project leader of the research team on Inclusive Cities and Diversity. Isabel has been involved in the research programme “(Re)mapping Rotterdam”. In this video, Isabel and her colleague Zouhair Hammana talk with Adel AlBaghdadi, founder of WE Organization, about the mapping exercise used in the course “Communicating (in)equality in the city” at EUR. You can read some of Isabel’s work here and here.

Isabel’s recommended readings:

Isabel’s work:

Thank you to Elmeri Tommiska for the music and post-production assistance.