Throughout the month of Urban October, we are undertaking a series of thematic engagements which reflect our long-standing commitments to research and practice, advocacy and activism, coalition and community-building, and public engagement and impact.
Here's a tour of what we are up to, with links to further information and how you can find out more or get involved.
Gender equality, social inclusion and community energy
Our programme starts in Cape Town with the international launch of the JustGESI project, led by Vanesa Castán Broto, and supported by the team including Sangita Thebe Limbu and Vicky Simpson at the UI. JustGESI works with partners in Ethiopia, Malawi, Mozambique and Tanzania to ensure that future energy transitions are equitable by advancing equality and inclusion in projects on the ground and in policy reform, and by addressing the skills gaps that have historically kept women and marginalised groups out of the clean energy economy. The project focuses on the strategies of institutional change and capacity building as key levers to bring about a radical change to advance gender justice in the transition to clean energy. The project website launched earlier this year which you can visit here.
If you want to find out more, there is also an in-person launch on Wednesday 22nd October, 1630-1800 in Sheffield to bring together scholars, practitioners and policy makers to reflect on the theoretical, methodological and practical implications of centering gender equality and social inclusion within energy transitions. If you would like to come along, sign up here.
Towards the end of the month, we will celebrate the impact of our previous work on Community Energy Systems and Sustainable Energy Transitions in Ethiopia, Malawi and Mozambique with the release of a series of films on World Cities Day (31 October) as part of the ESRC Festival of Social Science. These films bring to life the realities of community energy, exploring how diverse models of local energy generation—from solar to biogas—are helping to shape just and sustainable energy transitions. The films are produced and directed by Sheffield filmmaker Sean Lovell. Follow us on social media to make sure you don’t miss the release (Sheffield Urbanism LinkedIn, Bluesky, Instagram (@urban_institute_sheffield).
Work such as this is just one reason why Vanesa has recently been appointed by United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres to a new group of independent scientists to draft the 2027 Global Sustainable Development Report (GSDR). As mandated by UN Member States, this group and its report will inform the follow-up and review of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
This appointment recognises Vanesa’s decades of experience shaping international policy debates about climate change, sustainability and cities, including contributing to the UN Habitat World Cities Report, along with UI Visiting Researcher David Dodman. If you’d like to find out more about this work, you can watch a discussion between Vanesa and David and listen to the inaugural episode of the Urban Radar podcast on Cities and Climate Change – hosted by Beth Perry and Tom Goodfellow.
The politics and practices of knowledge (co)production
Our second strand of work starts on Tuesday 7th October 0900-1700 with an online international workshop on Untranslatable? The Linguistic Knowledge Politics of Southern Urban Theory, organised by Beth Perry, Tanzil Shafique (Southern Theorising Group, School of Architecture and Landscape), Adam Abdullah (Karachi Urban Lab/IBA Karachi), and Glyn Williams (Lund University). The workshop brings together contributions which reflect on the epistemic politics and practices of translation within Southern urban theory. Registration is now closed, but you can download the programme and book of extended abstracts here. You can also watch Adam Abdullah’s introduction to the event here.
October also sees the start of the Coproduction Futures Inquiry panel deliberations on how to improve the conditions for participatory and co-produced research in the UK higher education sector. The Co-Pro Futures Inquiry is a two-year collective intelligence gathering exercise led by Beth Perry, Catherine Durose (University of Liverpool) and Liz Richardson (University of Manchester) with Bryony Vince-Myers. Following the scene-setting report and call for evidence and ideas (read both reports here!), the panel will meet for the first time on Monday 13th October to consider how to bring about systems-wide change to ‘get our house in order’. A landscape review and searchable database of evidence will also be launched in the next few months. Join the Co-Pro Futures LinkedIn group or mailing list to keep up to date.
On Monday 20th October from 0930-1530 we will host a series of online dialogues on Knowledge Co-production Across Borders to dive into the international dimensions of working across borders and specifically, how we can create more supportive conditions and cultures for co-research with marginalised or underserved organisations or groups outside the UK.
We will hear from UK academics who have experienced challenges or found creative ways to do knowledge co-production across borders. This includes Diana Mitlin and Melanie Lombard who recently recorded a feature of Urban Radar on Urban Informality and Translocal Learning.
We will also find out how international researchers in Belo Horizonte, Cape Town and Karachi experience working with UK academics in co-produced projects, and whether bypassing them all together produces more equitable outcomes. Sign up and download the programme here.
These collective reflection exercises build on a rich literature on co-production in urban research to which UI staff and associates have contributed. One latest effort is Vanesa’s co-edited and Open Access book on Co-Production of Knowledge in Action led by colleagues at University College London.
The global infrastructure race
One of our European Research Council projects, GlobalCORRIDOR, is also approaching its final phase. Following a successful international meeting in Manchester this summer, October will see the launch of new reports and films emerging from the project, in collaboration between the Urban Institute and Karachi Urban Lab. The GlobalCORRIDOR newsletter is now reaching its fifth edition – sign up here to catch up so far.
During October we will also be organising a panel discussion on the “Global Infrastructure Race: Centring and Decentring China”. The panel will include Jon Silver, Linda Westman and Zhengli Huang and be chaired by Tom Goodfellow. It will interrogate the role of China in the global infrastructure race, examining a set of questions including:
- Whether the focus on a single country obscures the complex political economy of global infrastructure investment?
- Does the emphasis on Chinese investment essentialize (and orientalize) China, rather than unpack the politics of the global infrastructure race?
- And, can we reflect on potential impacts on urban development trajectories by engaging with Chinese domestic politics and statecraft?
The panel brings together insights from two ERC projects – GlobalCORRIDOR and PLURALIZE – which launched its website earlier this year. It is part of a closed invite-only event. However it will be recorded and released as an Urban Radar special in November. Follow Urban Radar on your usual streaming platforms or Instagram (@urbanradarpodcast) to make sure you don’t miss it. Looking ahead, November will also see the publication of an edited collection on The Material Geographies of the Belt and Road Initiative, with Elia Apostolopoulou, Han Cheng, Jon Silver and Alan Wiig.
Urban inhabitation and the urban technical
This anniversary provides us an opportunity to reflect on our cross-cutting thematic around urban inhabitation and the urban technical. Curated during COVID-19, this thematic has provided an orientation for the UI across our areas of work, focussing attention on the politics of urban inhabitation and how technical instruments, collective knowledges, urban politics and economic practices can be manoeuvred and choreographed in support of more just relations between humans, non-humans and the planet.
A particular focus over the past ten years has been on the field of black urbanism. During October AbdouMaliq Simone will continue this work under the initiative Humanity’s Urban Future, funded by the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR). We will be discussing this work during a recorded podcast feature with AbdouMaliq and his long-standing collaborator and CIFAR fellow, Ash Amin as part of Black History Month which will be released mid-October.
Two keynote lectures will provide an opportunity to reflect on some key features of our work on urban inhabitation and the urban technical. First, on Monday 20th October 1630-1800 AbdouMaliq Simone will give an online lecture entitled “That which is not decided: the edges of black urbanities”. Then, on Tuesday 21st October 1030-1215 Simon Marvin will deliver a keynote on the theme “Beyond splintering urbanism: infrastructural extensions, techno-social life and stretched geographies”, sponsored by the ESRC project Robotics as urban infrastructure. Both lectures are open to online registration here.
Translocal communities of knowledge and action
In a world of shrinking borders and increasing intolerance, the Urban Institute remains a place of welcome for co-researchers within and beyond the academy - in Sheffield, the UK and across the world. During 2025 we have been building our Sheffield Urbanism community bringing researchers together across career stages, disciplines and departments in the Faculty of Social Science. This involved our Winter and Summer programmes and a range of events and talks – watch out for our yearly round-up in the next month sharing films, blogs and presentations. Our October programme continues many of these relationships – including with our translocal partners across the world who are represented across our programme. We will welcome new staff, students and associates to the community – including our Urban Studies Foundational International Fellow, Junia Mortimer, first Visiting Practice Fellow, Al Mathers and new Leverhulme research fellow, Theo Barry Born. We are taking part in cross-community events with stakeholders across Sheffield, including around children and young people (building on our local partnership with Arbourthorne Community Primary School) and with social founders to explore the development of peer-learning networks for those setting up social enterprises and charities. We will also mark our commitment to sharing our research and demonstrating its relevance to the urban world we live in with a podcast special of Urban Radar, released on World Cities Day, 31 October.
Our extensive community is at the heart of what we do. We are privileged to have strong local roots, national networks and international alliances – connecting scholars and practitioners from around the world to disentangle the myriad ways in which urban research can change how we think about and act within the places and spaces we inhabit. We thank everyone who has been part of this journey so far.