Visiting Research Fellows

Stephen Marr
Department of Political Science, Linnaeus University, Växjö, Sweden and
Department of Global Political Studies, Malmö University, Malmö, Sweden
steve.marr@lnu.se

Residence period: January 17 - March 26, 2011
Host department: Department of Sociology

Short presentation:
Stephen Marr defended his dissertation in the Department of Political Science at the University of Florida in 2008. The work, now being reshaped into a book manuscript, examines the politics of urban space in Gaborone, the capital of the southern African nation of Botswana. The project, entitled Spaces of Aspiration, Liberation and Exclusion: The Politics of Urban Space in an African Democracy, situates Gaborone in a wider theoretical perspective related to the study of comparative urban politics. Concerned with questions of inequality, citizenship, urban planning, globalization and the performance of informal cultural politics, the dissertation explored how processes of political and socio-economic marginalization are created, sustained and subverted. To address these themes, I offer a new account of the continuities present in the transition from colonial to post-colonial cities, while arguing for the importance of a politics of performance in constructing post-colonial urban citizenships.

The project conducted while in residence at the GCGD builds on my previous work on urban politics in Africa. Entitled Rethinking Urbanity in a Time of Crisis: A Comparative View of City-ness in Africa and America's Midwest, the proposed research situates Africa at the center of a reappraisal of urban theory related to the study of comparative urban studies. The project is motivated by three primary research questions. In the contemporary context of explosive growth of cities in the developing world on the one hand, and the slow retrenchment of the city in parts of the developed world on the other, what does "urbanity" mean today and where is the urban to be located? What does the urban experience in Africa tell us about urbanity elsewhere? Ought we emphasize the spatial aspects of the contemporary city as a geographical entity, or as the primary site for the performance of particular practices and beliefs?

Joao Reis Nunes 
Aberystwyth University, Wales, UK
Department of International Politics
joaoreisnunes@gmail.com

Residence period: Oct 20 - Dec 8, 2010
Host department: School of Global Studies

Short presentation:
João Nunes recently defended his PhD thesis at Aberystwyth University, UK, which resulted in a PhD degree. The thesis consists of an engagement with the idea of "security as emancipation." According to this idea, security is more than the absence of military conflict, in that it should encompass the removal or alleviation of a series of constraints upon life and choice - such as poverty, lack of education, ill health, or lack of political freedom. The argument of the thesis identifies gaps in the "security as emancipation" framework and suggests theoretical reconsiderations based on an engagement with approaches and ideas – in the security literature and in poststructuralist and feminist social and political theory – that so far have been neglected or not examined sufficiently by this approach.

The agreed topic of research while working at GCGD is "Exploring the Health-Security Nexus: A Critical Emancipatory Approach." João will be investigating the connection between health and security in political practice, by focusing on the meanings and connotations of each term and their impact on the political realm. On the basis of this, his research will move towards an approach to this nexus that, on the one hand, recognizes the social nature of the two concepts and that, on the other hand, addresses the realities at stake from a perspective that aims to open up space for reflection and political action.
 

Senay Isin
Zonguldak Karaelmas University, Turkey
Department of Political and Social Sciences
isinsenay@gmail.com

Assignment period: Sept 13, 2010 - Aug 31, 2011
for postdoc research within the theme 'International Organisation of Production'.
Host department: Human and Economic Geography.

Short presentation:
Senay completed her PhD studies in the Department of City and Regional Planning at Middle East Technical University, Turkey, in October 2009. The subject of the PhD thesis focuses on decline impacts of deindustrialization and restructuring process as responses and intervention to deindustrialization process in a single economic base region. Adopting an interdisciplinary approach, the study mainly brings together and relates changes at the stages of the region, the city, the production system, the development structure, the working practices, the labour market in coal mining industry and the mono-centric firm in coal production.

The agreed topic of research while working at GCGD is "Changing Geographies of Innovation: Discussing knowledge spillovers in perspective of global production networks". She will participate in a research group investigating global value-chains and local effects of changes in global production networks.