Name: Urban Salon: Cities and Multiple Nationalisms
Start: 2025-04-24T17:30:00+01:00
End: 2025-04-24T19:30:00+01:00
Location: Devon House

Join us for a conceptual and practical conversation about the impact of diverse forms of nationalism on the political geographies of cities!
About this Event

Urban Salon: Cities and Multiple Nationalisms

This event is part of a long-term engagement delineating the conceptual and practical boundaries concerning the impact of different forms of nationalism on the political geographies of cities. Increasing populist and authoritarian currents worldwide, signal a growing urgency given the rise of tensions between cities and multiple forms of neo-nationalism. The speakers will explore how and in what ways nationalism possess the potential to influence the nature of urbanisation in the Middle East, Ukraine and India, as they interact in the remaking of global urban studies.

Event Schedule: Start 5.30pm

Welcome (Phil Hubbard, Kings College London)

Introduction & Chair (Jonathan Rock Rokem, Northeastern University London)

Speakers:

Bulldozer Hindutva: Ethnonationalist scapegoating and Cumulative Eviction Logics

(Liza Weinstein, Northeastern University Boston)

Military Frontline Cities

(Michael Gentile, University of Oslo)

Polarizations: when Neo-nationalism meets Global Urbanism

(Oren Yiftachel, Ben Gurion Univeristy & University College London)

Discussant: Jenny Robinson (University College London)

Q&A

Drinks 7.30pm

*Please register for the event via Eventbrite and bring proof of identity document or a photo of ID on your mobile, this is required by security at the entrance.

Speakers Bio's

Liza Weinstein is Associate Professor of Sociology at Northeastern University Boston. She is editor of International Journal of Urban and Regional Research (IJURR), and is currently completing a book titled, The Logics of Dispossession: Local Histories of India’s “World Class” Evictions, which analyses the shifting politics of housing insecurity and anti-eviction activism across urban India. She is also leading a National Science Foundation-funded study on the intersection of legal exclusion, embodiment, and territorial stigma in non-notified communities in Mumbai.

Michael Gentile is Professor of Human Geography at the University of Oslo and associate editor of Eurasian Geography and Economics. He has worked with various themes related to Central and Eastern Europe, including housing, socio-spatial differentiation and, more recently, urban geopolitics. His current regional focus is on Ukraine and he is principal investigator of the Norwegian Research Council project Ukrainian Geopolitical Fault-line Cities: Urban Identities, Geopolitics and Urban Policy.

Oren Yiftachel is an (emeritus) professor of urban studies and planning, political and legal geography, at BGU, Beersheba, and a prof. (hon) of geography and planning at UCL, London. In a wide range of publications his work has focused on critical understandings of the relations between space, power, inequality and conflict. He uses international comparative research, theoretical development and a focus on Israel/Palestine. Yiftachel is also a social and political activist who is member of several organizations working for social justice, equality and peace, mainly with indigenous and marginalized groups.