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Research Projects

Open City

Open City

I am currently the PI for an ESRC-funded project on the Open City, which is focused on London. The project is a collaborative one, involving Professor Michael Keith (University of Oxford), Professor Steve Pile (Open University) and Professor Karim Murji (University of West London). The project has two research staff, Dr Sasannah Cramer-Greenbaum and Dr Eda Yazici. It will also involve a number of creative fellows at certain stages of the project.

In this project, we are carrying out research on the ways in which cities such as London deal with questions about living with differences, with churn and mobilities and with migration and race. The project is focused on the London Borough of Camden, although we are also carrying out work that is focused on London as a whole as well as on other localities in the London area. This includes housing estate residents, community groups and social movements (such as migrants’ rights and tenants’ groups), local authority staff and London government staff and representatives.

Using London as its case study, the project explores how the city accommodates new forms of urban life, through the social configuration of movements and mobilisations, spaces and places and looks at the ways urban government at the city-wide and borough scales reflect, promotes or limit the idea of the Open City.

 The project brings together the sociologies of urbanism and city life, the geography of city life, migration and race studies and the relationship between policy and politics. Drawing these disciplinary traditions together allows the project to contribute to and develop debates and theories in a range of interdisciplinary research areas. The project aims to reconceptualise urban theory and migration and ethnic studies.