As recent co-director of ReCNTR, I will be introducing this double program with films by Deborah A. Thomas and John L. Jackson, Jr, this year’s Gerbrands Laureates who will be in attendance to share three films and discuss their ideas of experimental ethnography.

Under Maintenance: Contested Histories of Transport Infrastructure

Paper presentation as part of the panel organized by Olivier Keller (ETH) and Andreas Greiner (GHI-DC)

Collectively our papers investigate how transport infrastructures (rail and airways) shaped the lives of residents, operators, and users in the Global South and how social hierarchies were reflected in these systems. More than that, they demonstrate how these different groups of people, especially marginalized ones, shaped these structures in return. Together, the papers seek to complicate classical diffusionist narratives and reevaluate the transformative power infrastructure systems could unfold on societies in the Global South.

Assembling the Sustainable City: From Sedimented Injustices to Just Urban Futures

I’ll be giving a paper on this panel organized by Connie Smith and Jon Schubert

In the context of enduring ecological and imperial injustices, what might sustainable urban assemblages look like? How do techniques of planning, expertise, finance and services intersect with material landscapes and everyday practices of city-making to shape ideas about desirable urban futures? In a time when imperial, extractive and environmental injustices are still to be reckoned with, while facing the the double impasses of universalist policy prescriptions and reductionist celebrations of ‘informality as opportunity’, this panel explores questions of urban sustainability, justice and solidarity.

As part of this double-bill I held a workshop with local Doctoral Students and gave the third public lecture in the series ‘Urban Action during the Neoliberal Era: Local contexts, Urbanity, and resistance” convened by my colleague Dr. Sanae Aljem in collaboration with the Centre Jacques Berque (CJB), Ecole Nationale d’Architecture de Rabat (ENA), and l’Institut National d’Ammenagemet Urbain (INAU).

I was delighted to introduce my research and my book to colleagues and students at the Intercultural Studies English Language Department at Sidi Ben Abdellah Uni in Fes

I was invited to give a guest lecture for the project-based course Architectural Ethnography: Housing Design, Patterns of Everyday Life and Health in the Hague, coordinated by my colleague Nelson Mota in the Architecture Department at TU Delft. This was an exciting occasion to speak about ethnographic fieldwork methods, techniques, challenges, and thinking alongside students about the potential (and challenges) of using architectural tools to collect and process ethnographic/fieldwork data.

Part of a double-bill with Aziza Chaouni, I gave a talk that examined the genealogies of heritage-making efforts in contemporary Morocco and the competing uses towards which they are mobilized by a variety of actors in the contemporary moment. What does it mean to be ‘at home with colonial materialities’ and who gets to repurpose them in the present, decolonial moment?

I was invited by colleagues at the International Housing Institute, Erasmus University Rotterdam, to give a talk introducing my recent book. We spoke about the role of inclusion and participation when working with marginalized communities and how to develop collaborative knowledge production in the field of housing studies.

It was a pleasure to co-host with fellow Leiden Young Academy member Noel de Miranda the EU TalentON public pitch ceremony. Between September 14 and 18, Leiden European City of Science 2022 was filled with Bright Young Minds. Among them, 104 participants took part in the EU TalentOn. United in teams, they were challenged to come up with the best scientific solutions to pressing societal challenges.

Guest Lecture for the Course Ethnographic Methods for Spatial Studies, run by Nina Griebling and Charlotte Waiz von Eschen.

Paper presentation as part of panel:

S24 | Sensing Urban Violence, Conflict and Insecurity

Session Organiser(s) | Rivke Jaffe, Alana Osbourne

Track | Urban social practices & experience

Paper title | Affective Mobilizations: Policing Young Lower-Class Male Bodies in Urban Morocco