Projects
Understanding urban protest in a context of war: An ethnographic analysis of ‘urban political terrains’ in Eastern DRC. Ghent University
Ecomedia in urban Kenya: plotting climate change and shaping climate action KU Leuven
This project will unfold how youth-led environmental organisations and youth activists based in urban Kenya use ecomedia on online platforms to create climate change and environmental degradation awareness and action. Furthermore, it will look at the interplay between online ecomedia and environmentally-conscious choices in everyday life, NGO/volunteer work, and eco-activism. The concept of ecomedia highlights that, “media are first and ...
Occupation & City: The Proto-Urbanism of Urban Movements in Central São Paulo KU Leuven
Central São Paulo is concurrently the site, subject and in part the incessantly provisional product of myriad occupations. This project inquires whether and how such occupation practices perform instances of a latent proto-urbanism, considering the manifold ways in which they interact with the architecture of the city. Operating on the intersection of urbanism and anthropology, the project seeks coming to terms with the vicissitudes of the ...
Transitmigration and urban arrival infrastructures in Belgium and the Netherlands KU Leuven
The PhD project Transitmigration and urban arrival infrastructures in Belgium and the Netherlands has Brussels and Amsterdam as its empirical vantage points, the ethnographic vantage points are Amsterdam and Brussels but will also include other places where these so-called ‘transit’ migrants find or build temporary settlements, mainly along the North Sea coast in Belgium (Zeebrugge) and Northern France (Dunkerque, Calais). The project focuses ...
(De)radicalization and the multicultural city. Security, urban policy and everyday life in Brussels and Marseille. A comparative study. KU Leuven
Migration, integration and security have been among the major issues of urban governance in European metropolitan centres since the early 19th century and have been the object of various studies. Yet, less attention has been paid to how urban and security policies targeting ‘immigrant neighbourhoods’ in European cities have been transformed in our era of the ‘war on terror’. Taking Brussels and Marseille as our case studies, this project ...
Deradicalising the city. Understanding the impact of urban security policies on notions of connectedness, (in)security and belonging KU Leuven
This research focuses on the everyday impact of the reconfiguration of urban policy making and security through the lens of deradicalization. The main questions are: How do civil society and local residents relate to these policy changes? How do these policies of deradicalization and the experience of being surveilled impact upon notions of trust, connectedness, (in)security, and belonging? Firstly, I aim to understand the role and engagement ...
Comparing technology cultures in urban DR Congo (1960-present): Kinshasa, Kikwit and Lubumbashi. KU Leuven
The politics of love: urban development, intimacy and the future in the northern Kunene Region, Namibia KU Leuven
The most recent UN Habitat report (2010) has drawn attention to the fact that Africa is urbanizing at an incredible speed, and to the fact that the process of urbanization is exacerbating the already high levels of inequality on the continent. At the same time, Africa has caught the attention of global investors and speculators: one speaks of a “new scramble for Africa” (Carmody 2011) that involves both the old and emerging world powers. Made ...