Events
Current events
Research seminars in the City Centre seminar room (resuming autumn 2011)
Wednesday 6 July 2011
London Olympics: What's in it for Women?
Arts Lecture Theatre, QMUL, 1.30-5.30, followed by a reception
The London Women and Planning Forum wishes to explore how much and in what ways gender has been taken into account in planning 2012. Has the Olympic site been designed to address gender issues relating to ergonomics, safety, transport and accessibility? Have the competition facilities been designed to raise the profile of women's sports? Have the Olympic boroughs used the 2012 opportunity to increase the provision of women-friendly sporting venues? Will the Olympic legacy result in more women participating in exercise and sport? What are the wider implications for urban design of policies aimed at increasing women's participation in and access to sports?"
Speakers: Rima Akhtar (Chair, Muslim Women's Sport Foundation); Jayne Caudwell (Chelsea School, University of Brighton); Alison Nimmo CBE (Director of Design & Regeneration, Olympic Delivery Authority); Tim Woodhouse (Head of Policy and External Affairs, Women's Sport and Fitness Foundation). Discussant: Louise Mansfield (Department of Sport Science, Tourism and Leisure, Canterbury Christ Church University). Chair: Alison Blunt, Professor of Geography and Chair of the London Women and Planning Forum
All welcome. This event is free. To reserve your place, book online at www.qmul.ac.uk/events, or email events@qmul.ac.uk, including the name of the event and the number of places you wish to book.
Thursday 24 November 2011
Professor Jamie Peck (University of British Columbia)
'Fast Policy, at the Limits of Neoliberalism'
Eighth David M. Smith Annual Lecture
Venue and time to be confirmed.
Past events
20 May 2011
Workshop: Anti-/Fascism in a Globalising World: Seeking Transformative Politics beyond the Ballot Box
Francis Bancroft 1.02, 9.30am–5.30pm
This interdisciplinary workshop, open to academics and non-academics, explores the possibilities of a re-emergence of radical critiques of fascism and enactments of anti-fascism, particularly focussing on anti-authoritarian and autonomous organisational forms and philosophies. The workshop links this to the particular condition of globalisation as a factor in the constitution of fascism and anti-fascism in the present period.
Speakers include: Mark Hayes, Nick Gill, Phil Johnstone, Andy Williams, Anthony Ince, Oisin Gilmore, David Broder and Johnnie Crossan.
Organised by Anthony Ince. Part-funded by the Anarchist Studies Network, a research group of the Political Studies Association.
For more information, see: http://www.geog.qmul.ac.uk/newsevents/events/46854.html
Wednesday 16 March 2011
Women and Worship: New Approaches to Sacred Space
London Women and Planning Forum seminar, organised with the Women's Design Service
City Centre Seminar Room, Francis Bancroft Building, 1.30pm - 5.30pm
This half-day seminar forms the final element of 'Women, Worship and Space', a Women's Design Service project funded by the Faiths in Action strand of the Department of Communities & Local Government. Religious practices are often replicated in social and domestic rituals, but how acceptable space for women is determined by their faith is poorly understood in the wider community. This project brings women from different communities together to create shared space for dialogue, by exploring sacred spaces and how they are used.
Drawing on previous visits to sacred spaces and narrative work with women of faith in east London, we shall ask: how can we understand different faith spaces as communal and inclusive, if women are excluded from some of these? Is exclusion designed into religious buildings? If so, where is the appropriate space for dialogue? Can we share sacred space?
Speakers: Patrick Anderson `(Planning Advisor, Planning Aid for London); Dr Amanda Claremont (Chair, Women's Design Service / LWPF); Dr Ann David (Principal Lecturer, Department of Dance, Roehampton University); Dr HaeRan Shin (Lecturer at the Bartlett School of Planning / LWPF); Dr Barbra Wallace - Director, Women's Design Service.
Thursday 18 November 2010
Professor David Harvey (City University of New York Graduate Center)
The Dialectics of Social Change
Seventh David M. Smith lecture at Queen Mary
Skeel Lecture Theatre, People’s Palace
Queen Mary, University of London, Mile End Road, London E1 4NS
David Harvey is a Distinguished Professor at the City University of New York (CUNY) and the Director of The Center for Place, Culture and Politics. He is a geographer whose interpretations of the workings of economies, polities and societies have had great influence on other disciplines. His numerous books include The Limits to Capital (1982), Consciousness and the Urban Experience (1985), The Condition of Postmodernity (1989), Justice, Nature and the Geography of Difference (1996), Spaces of Hope (2000), The New Imperialism (2003), A Brief History of Neoliberalism (2005) and The Enigma of Capital (2010).
28 October 2010
Professor Ash Amin (University of Durham)
Cities and the Ethic of Care Among Strangers
Public lecture: Clinical Medical Lecture Theatre, Francis Bancroft Building, 6pm
Thinking on the politics of integration in plural and diverse societies has only just begun to recognise how everyday habits of encounter shape feelings of affinity or distance among strangers. In this lecture, Professor Ash Amin will consider the balance between bodily experience of the other and habits of urban dwelling in shaping relations between a city’s diverse communities. He will propose that, although worthy, attempts to break down community barriers through initiatives to bring people from different backgrounds together can only have a limited effect since most people in cities interact only fleetingly or rarely with strangers. Instead, he will make the case for a far broader approach based around building on the shared experiences of people living in an urban environment, involving interventions in a city’s public infrastructure and its cultures of shared concerns and attachments. Professor Amin will warn, however, that little progress will be made unless a new public aversion in the West towards the stranger, which is evolving into a broader sentiment of suspicion about difference, can be overcome.
Ash Amin is Professor of Geography at Durham University and the Executive Director of the Institute of Advanced Study. He is well known for his work on regional economic restructuring in conditions of globalisation, on reimagining what plural and diverse cities might be, and on the future for left politics. He is the author or editor of 17 books, including Cities: Re-imagining the Urban (2002, with Nigel Thrift), Placing the Social Economy (2002 with Angus Cameron and Ray Hudson) and The Blackwell Cultural Economy Reader (2004, edited with Nigel Thrift). His next book – Political Openings: An Essay on Left Futures (with Nigel Thrift) – is to be published by Duke University Press.
Monday 22 March 2010
Global Cities at Work: New Migrant Divisions of Labour
Discussion and celebration to mark the publication of this book by Kavita Datta, Yara Evans, Joanna Herbert, Jon May, Cathy McIlwaine, Jane Wills (Pluto Press, 2010)
At the The Octagon, QMUL, 7–9pm.
Global Cities at Work is about the people who always get taken for granted. The people who clean our offices, care for our elders and change the sheets on the bed. The book draws on testimony from more than 800 foreign-born workers employed in low-paid jobs in London during the first decade of the 21st century. We link London's new migrant division of labour to the twin processes of subcontracting and increased international migration. The book calls attention to the issue of working poverty and its impact on unemployment and community cohesion in London.
Chaired by Jane Wills. Introduction to Global Cities at Work by Kavita Datta, Jon May and Cathy McIlwaine. Followed by responses from: Marzena Chichon (London Citizens’ living wage campaign); Mark Abani (The Central Association of Nigerians in the UK); and Don Flynn (Migrants’ Rights Network).
For more information on the book, see: http://www.plutobooks.com/display.asp?K=9780745327983
For more information on the Global Cities at Work research project at QMUL, see: http://www.geog.qmul.ac.uk/globalcities/
Wednesday 24 June 2009
Home, Mosque and the Street: Muslim Women and Urban Design
London Women and Planning Forum Seminar
At the City Centre, Queen Mary, University of London
This half-day seminar focuses on Muslim women and their experiences of the built environment, particularly in London. Exploring religious, domestic and 'public' spaces, the seminar will address the ways in which Islamic design principles affect the everyday lives of Muslim women. It will also consider how planners, architects and urban designers can meet the needs of Muslim women from different communities and backgrounds and discuss how Muslim women working in these fields envisage urban change.
Speakers include Salmar Samar Damluji (architect and writer on Islamic design and mudbrick architecture in the Yemen); Barbra Wallace (Director, Women's Design Service); Barara Disney (Commissioning Manager, Older People, London Borough of Tower Hamlets Focusing on Sonali Gardens); Imogen Wallace (Department of Geography, Queen Mary, University
of London); with discussant Claire Dwyer (Department of Geogaphy, University College London).
Monday 27th April 2009
Arts Week Events with PLATFORM, organised by The City Centre
11.30–1.30pm 'Loot!' A walk around the East India Company, the world's first transnational corporation, with interdisciplinary group PLATFORM.
What can we learn about contemporary trade, human rights, and justice from the odyssey of the East India Company? Why is there almost no trace of this behemoth? Investigation, discussion, and tracking with Jane Trowell, starting at Fenchurch Street and ending at Bank.
3.45pm–5.30pm: 'Useful Discomfort: Direct Action, Art, and the Urgency of Slowness'. In Physics 602, GO Jones Building, QMUL. Presentation and discussion with interdisciplinary group PLATFORM, whose work over twenty five years has moved between the street, the office, the river, the fence, the field, cyberspace, and the art space. What does it mean to keep creating work that demands social change and environmental justice in a world where it is all too easy to be driven by emergency? Speakers include Jane Trowell (PLATFORM); David Pinder (Department of Geography, QMUL); Jen Harvie (Department of Drama, QMUL); and Sophie Hope (Birkbeck and B+B).
PLATFORM is a leading exponent of social practice art and brings together artists, social scientists, environmentalists, activists, human rights campaigners and educationalists to create innovative projects driven by the need for social and environmental justice. The group’s interdisciplinary approach combines the transformatory power of art with the tangible goals of campaigning, the rigour of in-depth research with the vision to promote alternative futures. In recent years its members have focused on the cultures and wide-ranging impacts of transnational corporations, and on the ways in which they are shaping our lives with unprecedented power. PLATFORM received Britain’s most prestigious environmental prize, the Schumacher Award in 2000, the first artist-led organisation to be honoured in the history of the event.
2 December 2009
The People’s Legacy: community participation in the shaping of East London 2012 and beyond
Focusing on the extent to which the Olympic Games can act as a catalyst for transformation in the places and people it touches, this event draws on the lessons of previous urban regeneration initiatives. Organised by the City Centre at Queen Mary, in association with the Olympic Park Legacy Company, the event will explore the potential for 2012 to set a new standard in social, economic and political legacy.
Chair: Jane Wills (Deputy Director of the City Centre)
Speakers:
- Bob Colenutt (University of Northampton)
- Nick Edwards (Fundamental)
- Lord Mawson (founder of the Bromley by Bow centre)
- Gregory Nichols (London Citizens)
- Samantha Sifah (Olympic Park Legacy Company)
- Students from the Department of Geography at Queen Mary, University of London
The Legacy Lecture Series has been conceptualised on behalf of the Olympic Park Legacy Company by Gillian Evans, Centre for Research on Socio-Cultural Change, University of Manchester.
Space for dance
London Women and Planning Forum Seminar
Wednesday 9th December 2009, 1.30–6.00
City Centre Seminar Room, Department of Geography, Queen Mary, University of London
This half-day seminar focuses on the importance of dance for women of all ages, and the planning and urban design issues around providing and using different spaces for dance. Drawing on discussions about the role of dance in improving health and wellbeing and ways of encouraging participation, the seminar will consider some of the challenges and opportunities presented by different spaces, and will consider how planners, urban designers and architects can meet the need for welcoming, accessible and innovative spaces for dance.
Welcome: Alison Blunt (QMUL Geography and LWPF Steering Group)
2:00 Sue Tibballs (Women’s Sport and Fitness Foundation)
2:30 Carolyn Deby (LABAN and sirenscrossing
3:15 Lisa Craddock (Foundation for Community Dance)
3:45 Sue Cooper and Lorraine Drolet (Essentially Dance)
4:15 Discussion
5:15 Drinks reception
The seminar fee is £25 and £10 for concessions. Payable on the day in cash or cheque. Please email Evelyn Owen at e.owen@qmul.ac.uk to reserve a place, and see www.lwpf.org.uk for more information.
Diaspora Cities: Urban Mobility and Dwelling
One Day Conference on Wednesday 16 September 2009
Held at the City Centre and the Department of Geography, Queen Mary, University of London
Themes include: urban mobility and disapora; urban dwelling and diaspora; representing the city in diaspora: film and art; diasporic urban cosmopolitanisms; diaspora, community and the city; diaspora cities
Welcome by Alison Blunt. Speakers: Misha Myers, David Kendall, Paul Watt, Deirdre Osborne, Kate Edwards, Eduardo Ascensao, David Garbin, Gareth Millington, Yoseka Loshitzky, Ayça Tunç, Nitasha Kaul, Myria Georgiou, Paolo Giaccaria, Uma Kothari, Charles Gore, David Rands, Jennifer Mack, Shompa Lahiri, Noah Hysler-Rubin and Jayani Bonnerjee
For full conference programme see: http://www.geog.qmul.ac.uk/diasporacities/programme9-09.pdf
Part of the programme Disapora Cities: Imagining Calcutta in London, Toronto and Jerusalem, funded by The Leverhulme Foundation. For details see: http://www.geog.qmul.ac.uk/diasporacities/
Arts of Cities
Seminar series co-convened by David Pinder for the City Centre, QMUL, and the London Group of Historical Geographers, in spring 2009
All seminars are held on Tuesdays at 5pm in the Wolfson Room at the Institute of Historical Research, Senate House, University of London.
20 January 2009
Luke Dickens (Royal Holloway, University of London) These are a few of my favourite fiends: post-graffiti, art worlds and the city
3 February 2009
Ian Walker (Newport School of Art, Media and Design) City gorged with dreams: surrealism and urban photography in Paris, London and Prague
17 February 2009
Rachel Lichtenstein (Artist, writer and oral historian) Memory embedded in place: exploration of city streets
3 March 2009
Esther Leslie (Birkbeck, University of London) On cold climates and crystal chains: ice and snow in the built imagination
Immaterial Labour and the Metropolis
6 February 2008, 12.30–2pm City Centre Seminar Room, Geography (Francis Bancroft Building, second floor, Room 2.07)
Department of Geography and School of Business and Management Inter-Departmental Seminar
This seminar opens a dialogue on new developments in work and city life. Recent ways of understanding the spread and intensification of capitalist work across bodies have drawn on the rich tradition of theory coming from workerist and post-workerist thought in Italy. The concepts of immaterial and affective labour, mass intellectuality, the general intellect, and cognitive capitalism, to name a few, seek to address the deepening struggle over the exploitation of biopolitical life for private profit. As more and more of social life is drawn into directly productive relations of exploitation, one finds that culture, art, aesthetic, ambience, mood, taste, public opinion and attention, now, more than ever, join science, technology, demography and management in the direct service of accumulation, albeit through the less than direct channels of social labour. Here the metropolis and the university work like a single bodily metabolism. The university pushes culture and science into bodies, and the metropolis pumps it out of these bodies. But what immaterial labour points to is the fissures and fractures of this metabolism, its parasitic and schizophrenic borders, its body doubles, prison breaks, and migrations. The metropolis and the university bring together more than they can account for, and more than they can manage. This seminar will cover some aspects the metroversity as work machine and the sabotage that gives this metroversity its future.
The seminar will feature brief presentations by Arianna Bove, Lecturer in Marketing in SBM, Matteo Pasquinelli, Doctoral Student in SBM, Paolo Do, Doctoral Student in SBM, and Stefano Harney, Reader in Strategy in SBM. This will be followed by a discussion chaired by Professor Jane Wills from Geography.
Interdisciplinary seminars
'Citizenship and Community: Moscow, Paris, London, Berlin and St Petersburg'
6 March 2008, 5.30pm City Centre Seminar Room, Francis Bancroft, Room 2.07
Tristram Hunt (Department of History, Queen Mary), Friedrich Engels’s London
Alastair Owens (Department of Geography, Queen Mary), Living in Victorian London: Materiality and Everyday Life in the Mid-Nineteenth-Century Metropolis
All invited.
For further information, please contact Professor Catherine Merridale or Professor Andreas Schonle.
The First Annual City Centre Workshop: Diaspora and the City [new window]
7 November 2007
Vital Geographies [new window]
ESRC-funded seminar series, 2007
Valuing Migrants in the City
1 May 2007 3.30-5.30pm
Speakers:
The Global Cities at Work team [new window]
Austen Ivereigh, London Citizens, Strangers into Citizens Campaign [new window]
Don Flynn, Migrant Rights Network
Migrants and their money
28 April 2007
organised by The City Centre and London Citizens
Launch Day
7 December 2006