Speakers

Keynote speakers

 

Diane DavisCharles Dyer Norton Professor of Regional Development and UrbanismHarvard University  

Diane E. Davis is the Charles Dyer Norton Professor of Regional Planning and Urbanism and Chair of the Department of Urban Planning and Design at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design. She started her teaching career in Sociology and History at the New School for Social Research before moving to MIT in 2001 and Harvard in 2012. Trained as a sociologist, Davis’s research interests include the relations between urbanization, class politics, and national development; comparative urban politics; socio-spatial practice in cities of the global south; and new territorial manifestations of sovereignty. Her books include Cities and Sovereignty: Identity Conflicts in the Urban Realm (Indiana University Press, 2011), Discipline and Development: Middle Classes and Prosperity in East Asia and Latin America (Cambridge University Press, 2004; named the ASA’s 2005 Best Book in Political Sociology), Irregular Armed Forces and their Role in Politics and State Formation (Cambridge University Press, 200), and Urban Leviathan: Mexico City in the Twentieth Century (Temple University Press 1994; Spanish translation 1999). Founder and curator of the Mexican Cities Initiative at Harvard’s GSD, Davis is Chair of the Faculty Committee on Mexico Harvard’s David Rockefeller Center for Latin America and on the Executive Committee of Harvard’s Weatherhead Center for International Studies. She is a contributing editor for the US Library of Congress, Handbook of Latin American Studies (Sociology: Mexico) and has served on the editorial boards of the Journal of Planning Education and Research, City and Community, and the Journal of Latin American Studies.

See Davis’s website here

 

Saskia Sassen, Robert S. Lynd Professor of Sociology, Columbia University  

Saskia Sassen is the Robert S. Lynd Professor of Sociology and Member, The Committee on Global Thought at Columbia University. Her new book is Expulsions: Brutality and Complexity in the Global Economy (Harvard University Press 2014) now out in 15 languages. Recent books are Territory, Authority, Rights: From Medieval to Global Assemblages ( Princeton University Press 2008), A Sociology of Globalization (W.W.Norton 2007),  and the 5th fully updated edition of Cities in a World Economy (Sage 2018). Among older books are The Global City (Princeton University Press 1991/2001), and Guests and Aliens (New Press 1999). Her books are translated into over 20 languages. She is the recipient of diverse awards and mentions, including multiple doctor honoris causa, named lectures, and being selected as one of the top global thinkers on diverse lists. Most recently she was awarded the Principe de Asturias 2013 Prize in the Social Sciences and made a member of the Royal Academy of the Sciences of Netherlands. 

See Sassen’s website here

 

Erik SwyngedouwProfessor of Human Geography, University of Manchester  

Erik Swyngedouw is Professor of Geography at Manchester University. His research interests include urban political-ecology, hydro-social conflict, urban governance, democracy and political power, environmental politics, and the politics of globalisation. His was previously professor of geography at Oxford University and held the Vincent Wright Visiting Professorship at Science Po, Paris, 2014. His books include Social Power and the Urbanization of Water (OUP 2004), Liquid Power (MIT 2015), Promises of the Political: Insurgent Cities in a Post-Political Environment (MIT 2018), The Post-Political and its Discontents (co-edited with Japhy Wilson, Edinburgh University Press, 2014), and Urban Political Ecology in the Anthropo-obscene (co-edited with Henrik Ernstson, Routledge, 2018). Erik Swyngedouw also holds Honorary Doctorates from Roskilde University in Denmark and the University of Malmö in Sweden.

See Swyngedouw’s website here


Speakers

 

Filip De Boeck, University of Leuven 

Rosa de la Fuente, Universidad Complutense de Madrid 

Rivke Jaffe, University of Amsterdam

Kees Koonings, University of Amsterdam and Utrecht University

Dalia Milián Bernal & Panu Lehtovuori, Tampere University, School of Architecture

Kjell-Åke Nordquist, University College Stockholm

Florencia Quesada, University of Helsinki 

Erika  Robb Larkins, San Diego State University 

Mauricio Romero, Universidad Javeriana / University of Helsinki

Carlos Sandoval, Universidad de Costa Rica 

Bjørn Sletto, University of Texas at Austin 

Elisa Tarnaala, CMI/ University of Helsinki