This is another episode of our Think&Drink Series in collaboration with the Georg-Simmel-Centre for Urban Studies working with the Humboldt University Berlin.
This talk focuses on the role of public services in delineating the boundaries of belonging and possibilities of participation in cities. Drawing on the notion of ‘infrastructural citizenship’, it asks how non-citizens navigate access to urban circulations and how rights and responsibilities are negotiated at these interfaces. Based on ethnographic, participatory and design research conducted with migrants, refugees and asylum seekers in the UK, Lebanon and Germany, it concentrates in particular on the physical and social infrastructures supporting the circulation of food and waste. The talk will outline the various ways in which migrants use infrastructural engagement to craft novel forms of belonging at the local level, contributing to our understanding of participation and equitable service delivery in increasingly diverse cities.
Guest:
Hanna Baumann
She is a researcher at UCL’s Institute for Global Prosperity within The Bartlett Faculty of the Built Environment. Her work is concerned with the role of infrastructures in shaping urban exclusion and participation, especially of refugees and migrants. She frequently deploys participatory, creative and arts-based research methods in her research and is editor of the journal CITY.
Beyond academia, she advises policy organisations and local governments on participatory approaches to planning public spaces and services. She has also worked on issues of human rights and urban development for non-governmental and UN agencies in the Middle East and South Asia.
Her research centres on social inclusion in urban transitions. Currently, she is pursuing three interrelated research strands that contribute to this wider aim: (1) the role of public services in shaping the urban citizenship of migrants and refugees, (2) participatory planning of sustainable food and waste systems with people living in food poverty, and (3) translation of gender-inclusive urban design into policy practice.
Most recent publication:
Another Provision: Co-Designing Communal Food Infrastructures in East London, 2024 (Co-authors Baumann H, Arens J)