Meeting in Turin on Universities and the Military (Mon 18th, 5pm CET) (ITA)

La settimana prossima, lunedí 18 continuiamo a confrontarci su guerra, universitá e militarizzazione con collegh* di CERTO (Coordinamento per l’Etica nella Ricerca) e corpo studentesco.

Ore 17 in presenza presso Sala Lauree del Dipartimento di Lingue

(Complesso Aldo Moro, Via S. Ottavio 18, terzo piano) o online al link nel poster.

Grazie a Pietro e Lorenzo per aver organizzato e per esserci!

Link al libro: https://www.erisedizioni.org/prodotto/universita-e-militarizzazione/

Book launches in Sheffield and London, 12th and 13th March

Next week I will present my book, For a Liberatory Politics of Home (Duke University Press), with colleagues and friends in Sheffield & London.

12th March 4pm GMT, at the Urban Institute in Sheffield. The event will be in person & online. Register at 👉 https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/urban-institute/news/book-launch-liberatory-politics-home-michele-lancione

13th March 4pm GMT, at Kings College, Department of Geography, in-person only.

Thanks to Beth Perry and Katherine Brickell for organising!

The epistemic tangles of urban inhabitation – Workshop UI (Sheffield) – Beyond Inhabitation Lab, 23-24 May 2024

Applications now welcome to participate in a workshop on 23-24 May 2024 ‘The epistemic tangles of urban inhabitation’ organised jointly by the Urban Institute (University of Sheffield) and Beyond Inhabitation Lab (Polytechnic University of Turin).

Deadline for submission March 25th 2024.

Apply here to present or attend the workshop.

In the twenty-first century we are still facing the challenge of how to address the question of planetary ‘habitability’. Inhabitation is in crisis, as increasing numbers of people are drawn into precarious lives, existing trajectories make life uninhabitable for billions, and migration feeds a new protectionism around affluent places. Attention must focus beyond the narrow domains of housing, homelessness or shelter, to the wider material and cultural structures of power and related forms of injustice which shape how we live in cities across the planet.

In this workshop, Beth Perry (Urban Institute) and Michele Lancione (Beyond Inhabitation Lab) invite scholars to discuss the relationship between urban inhabitation and epistemic practices, with the aim of investigating and unpacking the multiple politics, scales and spaces through which questions of knowing and doing the urban are produced and challenged across place and time. To start with, we are working with following basic definitions:

  • Urban inhabitation: the ways in which human (and non-humans) manage to make lives worth living in different urban contexts around the world;
  • Epistemic practice: the ways in which forms of data, knowledge and expertise shape the politics, policies and practices of urban inhabitation.

Understanding diverse ways of inhabiting the urban requires different ways of knowing the urban. Whilst scholars often emphasise the unknowability of the urban, and hence how we inhabit it in so many different ways, epistemic practices perpetuate which strive for sufficient certainty as a precursor for action. Critical scholars may inadvertently bolster hegemonic knowledge practices, as a refusal to settle on knowing anything enables certain forms of knowledge and expertise to be dismissed whilst others are heralded as legitimate.

Clearly, epistemic practice and urban inhabitation are not separated in everyday life. The distinction we propose here is therefore only analytical: it allows us to invite a focus on the epistemic tangles where struggles for more just city life emerge and unfold. We believe a specific focus on these practices is critical to shape wider understanding of the urban political – from global policy to grassroots action – where questions of epistemology and inhabitation are fused together and require more precise and direct questioning. Whilst such issues are often confined to the realm of policy (for instance, through ideas of evidence-based policy), we are interested in exploring the often mundane geographies where ways of knowing become crucial to tackle unjust ways of inhabiting, and vice versa – where counter-inhabitation practices may even ground questions around who we are and what it means to be human.

The focus of the workshop is therefore on the tangles between ways of inhabiting and ways of knowing the urban. The primary goal is to convene a space for dialogue and discussion leading to a special issue of a journal (for instance, South Atlantic Quarterly, Environment and Planning D or International Journal of Urban and Regional Research). However, please note, an invitation to present at the workshop cannot guarantee inclusion in the special issue and we are also interested in work-in-development that is not yet ready for publication.

The event will bring scholars together to discuss written provocations circulated in advance of the meeting, with the idea of making the most out of the in-person intellectual exchanges. Themes to be explored could include:

  • What does it mean to be urban-human, in relation to how we know ourselves and to other forms of collective identity and intelligence?
  • How do material and affective junctures of urbanity – including housing, infrastructure and logistics – with their loaded colonial, racial and financialised histories, produce new forms of epistemic injustice?
  • What ways of knowing are required to address the underlying structures of racial and gendered injustice and violence underpinning mainstream forms of urban inhabitation?
  • What epistemic vocabularies can help us reframe, reveal, repair and reimagine urban inhabitation?
  • How do we move beyond existing comparative imaginations through new forms of trans-local practice and study, attentive to the specificity of history and place?
  • What types of knowledge are required to understand new practices of urban inhabitation – how should they be produced and by whom?
  • What epistemic orders, contestations and forms of apartheid shape the theories and practices of urban inhabitation?
  • How to ‘think and do’ on the counterhegemonic use of urban knowledge within and beyond science?
  • What does it mean to ask these questions within the academy (ie not by renouncing to it, but staying with its troubles)?

All subsistence costs will be covered (food and accommodation). Travel bursaries will be available according to need and our budget limit. We welcome UK and international applicants. The workshop is intended to be face-to-face but we will consider hybrid participation on a case-by-case basis (for instance, if there are restrictions on visas, caring responsibilities and/or budgets).

How to participate:  

Submit 250 word abstract by Monday 25th March. Selected contributors will be notified by Wednesday 27th March.

Contributors will then be asked to prepare a draft of 1500-2,000 words summarising their main argument by Monday 6th May, which will be circulated to discussants.

Each contributor will be act as a discussant on another paper and will be expected to prepare a constructive response.

Limited places will also be available for attendance only (non-presenters).

Any questions, contact Beth b.perry@sheffield.ac.uk

Sign up here.

Our petition to fight the agreement between the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the state of Israel (ITA)

Con le bravissime Paola Rivetti e Alessandra Algostino (e tant* altr*) promuoviamo questa lettera indirizzata al Ministero degli Affari Esteri e della Cooperazione Internazionale (MAECI) riguardante la rinnovata cooperazione di ricerca tra istituzioni italiane e israeliane.

Come si puo’ vedere dal bando – https://www.esteri.it/it/diplomazia-culturale-e-diplomazia-scientifica/cooperscientificatecnologica/accordi_coop_indscietec/ – non ci sono indicazioni per escludere che tale cooperazione porti allo sviluppo di tecnologie dual use, anzi: la terza linea di finanziamento e’ chiaramente utilizzabile per lo sviluppo di tecnologie di sorveglianza e controllo.

Chiediamo la sospensione del bando non solo per ragioni morali, ma anche per proteggere le istituzioni italiane che hanno il dovere di prevenzione di genocidio secondo la convenzione del 1948 e che, quindi, collaborando con le istituzioni israeliane, si potrebbero esporre al rischio di complicita’ con quello che la ICJ ha definito ‘un rischio palusibile di genocidio

La nostra lettera: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Q5uuXmdJeDEyi06Kv1VkLPXAeVkMbfl8gHxPh6JGLQM/edit

Il form per firmarla: https://forms.gle/FC6vSN1Z98mDEy75A

Beyond Inhabitation Lab – 2024 Spring-Summer Events

I am excited to announce the Beyond Inhabitation Lab‘s 2024 Spring-Summer Seminar Series. We will be hosting seven events, including a book discussion, a collective conversation as well as five seminars by distinguished scholars who will present their work pertaining to inhabitation and urban struggles across diverse geographies. 

All events are free to attend online by registering at the links below, and all sessions will be recorded and made available on the Lab’s YouTube channel.

Please find a summary of the major info below. For more details and the individual events’ posters, check the Lab’s events page.

——

The first seminar will occur on 21st March 2024, 5 p.m. CET, with Enikő Vincze’s “Why invest in Romania?” Investment strategies and state interventions advancing real estate development in semipheripheries. To attend online register at: https://polito-it.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZ0pc-yvrTMrGNx3ocrgPCMAQcWpmzeL6Z9B

The second seminar will take place on 28th March 2024, 5 p.m. CET, with Aya Nassar’s “Giving up the Idea of Home”: ambivalent geographies, geopoetics and resisting capture in the cities of the Middle East. To attend online register at: https://polito-it.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZMtf-iorT4tGNz_MyXIlZpi9Kh8EqP041Ud

On the 5th April 2024, 3 p.m. CET, we will host a conversation around Michele Lancione‘s latest book, For a Liberatory Politics of Home (Duke University Press, 2023) with Sandro Mezzadra, Francesca Governa, Margherita Grazioli and Silvia Aru. The seminar will be in Italian and will be in-person in Turin. To attend online register at: https://polito-it.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZ0pd-qpqz4vH9fcvrbnTg2394XX7dKQ2ssn

On the 11th April 2024, 3 p.m. UTC (4 p.m. CET), we will host a conversation for the Global Urban History Project co-organised by Wangui Kimari and Michele Lancione on Urban Undersides, with Alana Osbourne, Irene Peano and Rodrigo Castriota. To attend online register at: https://www.globalurbanhistory.org/content.aspx?page_id=4008&club_id=803980&item_id=2154067

The third seminar will take place on 9th May 2024, 5 p.m. CET, with Irene Peano’s Made in Italy: Contemporary archaeologies of agribusiness’ encampment archipelago. To attend online register at: https://polito-it.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZ0pf-itqjkjHNJma_UTesE0obNQclW6AB-v

The fourth seminar will take place on 23th May 2024, 5 p.m. CET, with Mona Fawaz’s Inhabiting Beirut’s Cycles of Boom and Bust. To attend online register at: https://polito-it.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZUuc-mrqjgpGNWyIv7XxQiYsTdN0B-pcEgV

In the Lab’s fifth and final seminar, on 13th June 2024, 5 p.m. CET, we will have Emma Shaw Crane‘s Martial Matters: Race, Environment, and Surplus in the Suburb. To attend online register at: https://polito-it.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZApcuqtpzkuE9FebU-97xI6gRMnS7r6cz5t

——

We look forward to having you join us!

Student assembly on Israel, the war machine and the role of our Universities | Today in Turin

From Israel to Leonardo: The role of our universities in the war industry.

Today 17:30 at the Einaudi campus in Turin with Cambiare Rotta Torino, End Fossil and the Palestine Project.

The meeting is a conversation amongst anti-militarist and anti-extractive collectives, with the idea of gathering our knowledge and publishing an open-source booklet on these topics. All welcome.

Università, Militarizzazione, Guerra e Palestina – Meeting in Cagliari (ITA)

All’interno del bellissimo Ard Film Festival (https://alardfilmfestival.com/), organizzato a #Cagliari dall’Associazione Amicizia Sardegna #Palestina, parleremo di guerra, complesso militare industriale e il rapporto tra #Università e #Militarizzazione Eris Edizioni.

Questo sabato alle ore 11, Teatro Massimo di Cagliari.

Grazie a tutt* i compagn* e le compagn* che hanno contribuito a organizzare questo evento, inclusi No CPR Macomer LasciateCIEntrare Potere al Popolo A Foras – Contra a s’ocupatzione militare de sa Sardigna e la bravissima Alice Salimbeni

Programma: https://www.facebook.com/events/1494657184599311?ref=newsfeed

Libro: https://www.erisedizioni.org/prodotto/universita-e-militarizzazione/

Open Call: Beyond Inhabitation Lab – Urban Transitions Hub Urban Studies Summer School

Inhabiting the Surrounds: Urbanity, Critique and Speculative Practice

Urban Studies Summer School organised by the Beyond Inhabitation Lab and Urban Transitions Hub 

23-26 September 2024, Turin – 2-6 June 2025, Lisbon

Confirmed keynote instructors
Turin: Ruth Wilson Gilmore (CUNY), Alana Osbourne (Radboud University) and Tatiana Thieme (UCL)
Lisbon: AbdouMaliq Simone (University of Sheffield) and Filip De Boeck (KU Leuven)

Rationale

What does it mean to think around habitation and its struggles, in a world where every inch of the possible seems to have been colonised by the extractive and expulsive makings of racial, financial capitalism? How to assemble, and engage with, radical modalities of use-value concerning the staples of habitation – addressing housing (in)justice, the expansion of computation, the emergent multiplicity of entities forming ever-complex ecologies, to reimagine a sense of the future in the midst of a planetary crisis? How to re-approach a critique to dwelling praxis grounding it within the generative force of what AbdouMaliq Simone has named the surrounds, “a shape-shifing matrix of spaces, times, and practices that exist right now within the turbulent processes of contemporary urbanization”?

We are interested in establishing a conversation with engaged scholars tackling these questions in a number of transdisciplinary ways, and, in particular, we are keen to hear from those who transcend the remit of conventional ‘comparative’ urban approaches, and those who go beyond the rubric of liberal, Western literatures and approaches to understand geographies of struggles in a situated and politically relevant way. Grounded in the ‘collective study’ methodology of the Beyond Inhabitation Lab, and fostered by the long-standing critical tradition of urban thinking adopted by the Urban Transitions Hub, we have joined forces to provide a platform for thinking and exchange around these themes, in the form of a double-event School located in two Southern European cities (Turin and Lisbon).

Structure

Aimed at 15 selected post-doctoral scholars (max. 5 years from PhD award), the School is organised around two distinct moments:

  1. Turin, 23-26 September 2024: the cohort of selected post-doctoral participants will join us in Turin, for a 4-day event organised around three keynote lectures from Ruth Wilson Gilmore (CUNY), Alana Osbourne (Radboud University) and Tatiana Thieme (UCL), and ample (formal and informal) time to discuss the draft paper ideas, and to debate around the theme of the School at large.
  2. Lisbon, 2-6 June 2025: the same post-doctoral participants will join us in Lisbon, for a 5-day event organised around two keynote lectures from AbdouMaliq Simone (University of Sheffield) and Filip De Boeck (KU Leuven), a series of writing workshops with the purpose of building on the collective study initiated in Turin by discussing with the participants their drafts papers, and a day of outdoor urban explorations. 

Commitment

In applying, participants commit to the production of one individual high-quality academic paper each, which will be considered for inclusion in one or more special issues arising from the School. In detail, this commitment includes:

  • The submission of a long abstract (800 words) at the time of application, upon which the candidate will be selected, also considering their CV
  • Following the Turin event, the production of a 4,000-word draft, which will have to be submitted 3 weeks in advance of the Lisbon event (drafts will be discussed by the instructors and participants during the Lisbon workshop)
  • Following the Lisbon event, the submission of an 8,000-word academic paper for the production of one or more special issues arising from the School, to be pitched to journals such as IJURR, Antipode, EPD (normal peer-review process will apply)
  • If the paper is selected by the organisers for the production of the special issue, the participant commits to following the peer-review process in a proactive and timely manner

What we offer

  • Leading keynote speeches and opportunity to engage with the speakers
  • A curated series of conversations, fostering intellectual exchange and bonding
  • Structured feedback provided to each of the Participants’ papers, with the intent to produce one or more insightful special issues in leading academic journals
  • Lunches and coffee breaks
  • For the Turin event: 3 scholarships of €350 each for selected applicants who could not afford to take part in the School otherwise
  • For the Lisbon event: 3 scholarships of €350 each for selected applicants who could not afford to take part in the School otherwise

Cost

The events are free. Transportation to the School locations, dinners and accommodation are not included; for the latter, we will suggest reasonably cheap options for both cities.

Application

We welcome participants whose proposed works are grounded both empirically and historically/geographically, and we will give priority to those writing from the margins of Anglophone academia. Particular attention will be paid to works drawing on critical-race, feminist, and queer approaches to urban habitation and/or those informed by more-than-human, materialist, political-ecological approaches.

Please note that the School is strictly in-person (no online attendance will be possible). The working language will be English.

To apply, fill out the following form by 30th April 2024. We will not accept delayed applications in any circumstance.


TO APPLY, CLICK HERE

Or copy and paste the following URL into your browser:
https://forms.gle/hxz4vfVstXaYSXmo8


Organising Committee

Convenors

Michele Lancione, Andrea Pavoni, Irene Peano, AbdouMaliq Simone 

Writing coordinators

Marco Allegra, Mara Ferreri, Francesca Governa, Lavinia Pereira

Local organising committee

Turin: Silvia Aru, Chiara Cacciotti, Chiara Iacovone, Mara Ferreri, Michele Lancione, Daniela Morpurgo.
Lisbon: Marco Allegra, Salomé Honório, Andrea Pavoni, Irene Peano, Lavinia Pereira,  Luisa Rossini

Supported by

The event is funded by the European Research Council Inhabiting Radical Housing project (n. 851940, PI: Lancione).

It is also supported by DIST (Polytechnic and University of Turin), DINAMIA’CET-ISCTE (Lisbon University Institute), and the ICS (University of Lisbon).

If you wish to download a PDF for circulation, please click below.

Antifascist University Alliance – a new initiative in Turin

Today, we had our first meeting in Turin of our new antifascist university alliance.

This is a renewed form of activism that links our anti-fascist praxis to anti-militarism and the need to defend the terrain of our universities in order to fight inside and outside them. It comes out of the increased militarization and policing of our University spaces, as well as to fight the far-right acceleration of the political and societal spheres in Italy.

In our first public meeting, we talked about foibe (for a brief intro on the topic see here) with Eric Gobetti and Bruno Maida.

If you work in the university world in Turin, you can sign up and read our Manifesto here (in Italian): https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSenJkDVdA3i7h8FUqCUo2S-oG_uoICo4FY-TO4rReTSA1phbA/viewform?usp=sf_link

Presenting For a Liberatory Politics of Home at the Radical Urban Lab, St Andrews

I look forward to joining the Radical Urban Lab at the University of St Andrews on Monday 5th, February, as part of their week of events.

I will take part in the VIVA discussion of Rowan Milligan’s wonderful PhD thesis, and then present an excerpt of my Duke University Press book For a #Liberatory #Politics of #Home to the Lab.

Thanks to my comrade Antonis Vradis for organising!

Here some details of the event: https://rul.st-andrews.ac.uk/for-a-liberatory-politics-of-home/