This seminar will take place on Thursday 7th December 2023 1000-1300 UK time both in person in the Alfred Denny Conference Room in Sheffield and online (see below for sign up).
The last few years have seen a steep rise in urban resistance across the world. Urban resistance springs from a combination of discontentedness towards public policies, inflation, urban coloniality or a collective feeling of discrimination and negligence of certain communities by state authorities. Resistance movements in the last decade have formed against racism, casteism, dispossession, gender-injustice or authoritarian political leadership. Two themes emerge strongly from present happenings: one broadly concerning theoretical issues of democratization and the erosion of democracy and the other focusing on citizens' resistance against authoritarianism.
The seminar brings together scholars from various disciplines who share cross-cutting concerns about the impact of weakening of democracy on climate change, urbanity and how communities co-exist together. A strong focus will be on how we think through resistance and rebuild solidarities towards a hopeful pluriverse future through reimagining democratic institutions based on justice, human rights and address inequality, violence and oppression. The seminar speakers will engage with urban resistance movements and protest and the regeneration of democratic ethos in global politics.
The seminar is organised by Papia Sen Gupta as part of her British Academy Visiting Fellowship 2023 on Democracy, Urban Resistance and Citizenship. It is supported by the Urban Institute within the themes of Urban Humans and Life at the Margins.
The speakers include:
- Prof. Catherine Eschle (online), School of Government and Public Policy, University of Strathclyde. Glasgow. UK
- Dr Elçin Aktoprak (online), Former Faculty of Political Sciences, Ankara University. The School of Human Rights Association.
- Prof. Dilip Gaonkar (online), Director of the Center for Global Culture and Communication. Northwestern, University. USA.
- Prof. S. J. Cooper Knock (in-person), Department of Sociological Studies, University of Sheffield. UK