This feature is a live recording of an in-person event on Urban Research Labs in Times of Conflict and Post-Truth, recorded in July as part of the Sheffield Urbanism Summer Programme.
This was an ‘in conversation’ event during which Tom and Beth explored the challenges that Mona and Nausheen face running urban labs in the face of persistent conflict, misinformation and authoritarianism. The conversation ranges from the origin and motivation for establishing their research labs, to the ways in which they curate urban data as a public good for advocacy and activism, to some of the specific issues on which they work including housing crises, climate change and migration.
Guest biographies:
Nausheen Anwar is the Founder and Director of the Karachi Urban Lab (KUL), which was set up in 2016 in a context where data production on the ‘urban’ in Pakistan remains top-down and largely technocratic. The KUL sees its role to fill a ‘gap’ in data/knowledge production from the ground up and in a critically oriented way. Nausheen is also a Professor of City & Regional Planning in the Department of Social Sciences & Liberal Arts (SSLA), IBA and Urban climate resilience lead and principal researcher, IIED's Human Settlements research group.
Mona Fawaz is co-founder of the Beirut Urban Lab at the American University of Beirut, a regional research center invested in working towards more inclusive, just, and viable cities. The Lab produces scholarship on urbanization by documenting and analyzing ongoing transformation processes in Lebanon and its region's natural and built environments. It works towards materializing a vision of an ecosystem of change empowered by critical inquiry and engaged research, and driven by committed urban citizens and collectives. Mona is a Professor in Urban Studies and Planning at the American University of Beirut.
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Thanks to AbdouMaliq Simone and the Canadian Institute For Advanced Research Humanity's Urban Future programme for supporting the visit and podcast.