While an ongoing crisis of care has impacted the livelihoods of urban communities across the world, it has at the same time spurred innovative communal practices and forms of urban life. Building on and contributing to recent debates in urban and feminist geography on social reproduction and urban infrastructures, this two-day workshop (May 30-31) will bring together emerging and leading scholars and activists/practitioners from both the Global North and South in order to explore: 1) the ways that grassroots infrastructures are built and sustained through the everyday struggles of urban residents; and 2) how these infrastructures function as a dual form of urban social reproduction and political transformation.
This workshop will be the first meeting of a proposed network of scholars across contexts working around themes of urban and socio-material infrastructures. The goal of the network is threefold: 1) to make connections between early career scholars doing similar work across contexts; 2) to generate the exchange of new ideas and thoughts and to spark future collaborations and events (academic and otherwise); and 3) to foster connections between early career scholars, more senior researchers, and activists in order to bring these groups into dialogue with the network. Other outputs from the event will include a digital zine, which will be housed, along with recorded workshop sessions and additional resources, on a website created for this purpose.
Day 1 – Thursday 30/5/2024
Welcome: Welcome –Introduction by Nina Ebner (El Colegio de Mexico, Mexico)
& Matina Kapsali (University of Manchester, UK)
(Mex) 7:15-7:30
(Gr) 16:15 – 16:30
(UK) 14:15 – 14:30
Session 1: “Grassroots infrastructures as spaces of political transformation, everyday life,
and resistance”
(Mex) 7:30-9:00
(Gr) 16:30 – 18:00
(UK) 14:30 – 16:00
Lazaros Karaliotas (University of Glasgow, UK) &
Ana Santamarina Guerrero (UNED, Madrid)
Sage Ponder (Florida State University, USA)
Alejandro de Coss-Corzo (University of Edinburgh,UK)
Amy Horton and Joe Penny (University College London, UK)
Mantha Katsikana (York University, Canada)
Break
Session 2: “The gendered politics of social reproduction in the city”
(Mex) 9:15 – 10:45
(Gr) 18:15 – 19:45
(UK) 16:15 – 17:45
Sarah Marie Hall (University of Manchester, UK)
Cristina Temenos (University of Manchester, UK)
Tiana Hayden (El Colegio de Mexico, Mexico)
Aliki Koutlou (University of Manchester, UK)
Eda Beyazit Ince (University of the West of England, UK)
Day 2- Friday 31/5/2024
Session 1: Roundtable discussion
(Mex) 9:45 – 10:45
(Gr) 18:45 – 19:45
(UK) 16:45 – 17:45
Colectivarte/La Promesa (Ciudad Juarez)
Heart&Parcel (Manchester)
Irida Women’s Center (Thessaloniki)