CUCR research
Research strands
Research in development and fieldwork has focused on one of five strands of current interest.
- The circulations of people and objects
- Non-Cities
- Urban interventions
- Communities, difference and social inequalities
- Art and urban intervention
Research projects
The Shehr Network, an academic initiative that seeks to further a social-historical and critical understanding of contemporary cities and urban practices in the Middle East, South Asia and Africa.
International Research Group on Governing cities in Africa — law, local institutions and urban identities since 1945--African and European researchers employing different historiographical, theoretical and methodological approaches to study Cities in Africa over the past half century.
Network Association of European Researchers on the Urban South (N-AERUS)— a collaborative research network that facilitates exchanges among researchers across the world and conjoint, comparative investigations.
Woodrow Wilson Center Immigration and Integration in Urban Communities — a network examining how immigrants negotiate with longtime residents over economic, political, cultural, and linguistic boundaries
Africa Urbanism: the theory building initiative — This project seeks to address the continued absence of theoretical work on the nature and dynamics of urbanism in African cities characterised by large swathes of informality. African Centre for Cities, University of Cape Town
Living in the African City (Swiss National Fund)a research collaboration that seeks a better comprehension on how cities, and in particular African cities, are informed and transformed by their inhabitants and how, on the other hand, the cities transform the life of their inhabitants.
Urban Peripheries (Center of Contemporary Culture of Barcelona and the University of California-Berkeley — a research collaboration that explores the production of urban peripheries and the contributions of the peripheries to the dynamism of the metropolis.
Inter-Referencing Asia: Urban Experiments and the Art of Being Global (Social Science Research Council and the University of California, Berkeley)—a research collaboration that examines howAsian cities produce global urbanism through experiments of interreferencing whereby urban elites borrow, copy, and articulate city-making across national borders.
Making Global Cities (Institute of Global Studies, University of Minnesota) — a north-south research collaborative among scholars from diverse disciplines and geographical backgrounds to conduct research on selected mega-cities in the global South and the transnational processes that link these cities.
Space for Panafrican Research, Creation and Knowledge — a collaboration of urbanists, artists, writers, and filmmakers to create program linkages and intersections of knowledge about a wide range of secondary cities in Africa.
An Anthropology of Secondary Cities in Africa (A comparative regional analysis)— collaborative research project examining the singular dynamics of secondary cities, with case studies from Congo, Ghana, Namibia, and Cameroon)
Art and Urbis (Doual’art, Cameroon) —an international network of artists, architects and urbanists working on the redevelopment of urban space and the building of transdiciplinary urban cultural institutions.
Initiating Urban Cultural Studies in Cambodia (Centre for Khmer Studies)—a collaborative research and training program that attempts to document the economic and social complexions of urban districts in Cambodia)
Urban Poor Consortium —the North Jakarta collaboration —a research and training program that works with 80 community residents of six socially and economically heterogreneous districts in North Jakarta to document local social economies and power relations as a political instrument in various restructuration efforts underway in the city.
Megacities Project: Problematizing the Urban (Theory, Culture and Society New Encyclopedia Project) —a collaborative publication project that envisions a set of theoretical frameworks to understand emergent conditions in what may be called the "twenty-first century city", outside normative urban theories modeled variously on the ideas of cosmos, machines and biological bodies.
Crossroads Project —a new collaborative research project that examines the remaking of urban economies in Kinshasa, Nairobi, Dar es Salaam and Abidjan through the elaboration of transurban circuits of entrepreneurship, small and medium scale trade with nodes in Dubai, Bangkok, and Guangzhou.
Identities Project [PDF download]
Researcher: Bev Skeggs
Funded: ESRC
Translating Beijing Researcher: Caroline Knowles
The Life-worlds and Journeys of a Flip-Flop Sandal (2007)
Funded by the British Academy
Researchers: Professor Caroline Knowles and Michael Tan
Landscapes of Belonging: British and SE Asian Migrants in Hong Kong
Funded by the British Academy
Researchers: Professor Caroline Knowles and Douglas Harper
Scientific Co-ordination of the NORFACE* International Research Programme:  Re-emergence of Religion as a Social Force in Europe?
(2007 – 2010)
Researcher: Professor Roger Hewitt
Contemporary Anglo-Jewish Community and Leadership: Coping with Multiculturalism (2008-2009)
Funded by ESRC
Researchers: Ben Gidley, Keith Kahn-Harris
Architecture of Contemporary Religious Transmission (2008-2009)
Funded by NORFACE
Researchers: Roger Hewitt, Caroline Knowles, Vicky Skiftou, Britt Hatzius.
Signs of the City - Metropolis Speaking (2007-2009)
Researchers: Britt Hatzius, Michael Keith, Alison Rooke
Partners: Urban Dialogues (Berlin), Haus der Kulturen der Welt (Berlin), Atelier for free Associations (Sofia), Watermans (London).
Mobilising Knowledge - Solving the interaction gap between older people, planners, experts and general citizens within the Thames Gateway (May 2007-October 2008).
Funded by Urban Buzz
Researchers: Gesche Wuerfel, Alison Rooke, Ben Gidley, Michael Keith, Simon Rowe, Rebecca Maguire
Beyond the
Numbers Game (2006-2007)
Funded by EQUAL (European Social Fund) Inclusion Through Media Programme
Researchers: Ben Gidley, Tony Dowmunt, Imogen Slater, Marjorie Mayo
The Capital's 'language shortfall' and migrants' economic survival - economic activity amongst non-speakers of English in London workplaces (June 2006-June 2007)
Funded by ESRC
Researcher: Roger Hewitt
Risk Cultures in China: an Economic Sociology (2006-2009)
Funded by ESRC
Researcher: Professor Michael Keith, Professor Scott Lash
Governance and Diversity: Fluid Communities, Solid Structures (2006-2007)
Funded by The Joseph Rowntree Foundation
Researcher: Dr Marj Mayo, Dr Ben Gidley, Dr Kalbir Shukra
Evaluation of Sci:dentity: Engaging with the Science of the Sexes (2006)
Funded by The Wellcome Trust
Researcher: Dr Alison Rooke, Benjamin Gooch
Camberwell Advocacy Support Project (2005-2006)
Funded by Camberwell Neighbourhood Renewal, on behalf of Southwark Alliance
Researcher: Dr Ben Gidley, Dr Kalbir Shukra, Dr Karen Wells.
Interpreter Orientation and Applicant Expectation in the Political Assylum Process (2005-2007)
Funded by ESRC
Researcher: Dr Moira Inghilleri