About this podcast

Ross Beveridge

Ross is a Senior Lecturer in Urban Studies at the University of Glasgow working in the field of urban politics and governance. His most recent book is How Cities Can Transform Democracy, co-authored with Philippe Koch (ZHAW Zurich) and published with Polity Press in 2022. He is a member of the editorial board of the journal Geography Compass and is co-founder and editor of the Urban Political Podcast. 

Markus Kip

Markus listens to many podcasts and founded the UPP with Ross as something to listen to himself. A failed musician, he was familiar enough with punkrock to set up the first episodes and has been enjoying doing it as a wonderful means to talk to fascinating people. A critical urban scholar trained in sociology and former homeless community organizer, Markus lives in Berlin, hangs out at the Georg-Simmel-Center of the Humboldt University and currently works as a postdoc at the collaborative research center “Structural Change of Property” at the University of Jena (academic website). 

Nitin Bathla

Nitin (born 1986) is a lecturer and postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Architecture, ETH Zürich, where he coordinates the doctoral program at the Institute of Landscape and Urban Studies.  He lectures on urban studies, and political ecology, and his current research focuses on agrarian questions under the planetary age. In his academic practice, Nitin actively combines research with artistic practices of filmmaking, and socially engaged art. His 2020 film Not Just Roads with Klearjos E. Papanicolaou premiered at several important film festivals and won the SAH Film Award 2022. 

Mathilde Lind Gustavussen

Mathilde is a PhD candidate in sociology at the Freie Universität Berlin. Her research focuses on housing, displacement, and tenant organizing in California. She joined the Urban Political Podcast in 2023.

Leah Bonvin

Leah holds an MA in Critical Urbanisms from the University of Basel. Her research focuses on vernacular landscapes and questions of heritage in post-socialist contexts. She is also interested in experimenting with methodologies such as creative writing, photography and audio.

Talja Blokland 

Talja Blokland is an urban sociologist who has worked at Yale University, the University of Manchester and various Dutch universities. Since 2009, she has held the chair of Urban and Regional Sociology at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. Her publications include Urban Bonds (Polity 2003), Creating the Unequal City (edited with C. Giustozzi, D. Krüger and H. Schilling, Ashgate 2016), Community as Urban Practice (Polity 2017), and various articles on race and ethnicity in the city, poor neighbourhoods, urban violence, gentrification, urban middle classes and neighbourhood relations and everyday interactions.

Hanna Hilbrandt

Hanna Hilbrandt serves as a Professor in Social and Cultural Geography at the University of Zurich’s (UZH) Geography Department. In addition to researching urban climate finance and governance, Hanna’s work explores spaces of mundane transgression, planning conflict, and housing marginality. Her book Housing in the Margins (Wiley 2021) explores informal dwelling practices in the context of Berlin’s increasingly tight housing market.