Cities and Social Justice research Cluster is a research and teaching group interested in how to articulate and promote ways of living in cities that are more socially and ecologically just. It is based in the School of Geography at the University of Leeds and is composed by a diverse group of staff and postgraduate students amongst which: Sara Gonzalez, Stuart Hodkinson, Federico Venturini, Victoria Habermehl, Alex Schafran, Paul Routledge, Paul Chatterton, Stella Darby, Ayona Datta, Paul Waley, Ana Cabrera Pacheco and Chiara Tornaghi but there are other colleagues in the school and across the University broadly linked to the Contested Cities project in Leeds (view members).

[LÍNEAS DE TRABAJO] Our work spans five main areas:

  1.  Understanding and challenging the neoliberal city
  2. Everyday practices, public space and consumption in the city
  3. Cities, climate change and sustainable urban futures
  4. Activism and social movements in the city
  5. Scholar-activism and participatory action research

[METODOLOGÍA] Our research is empirically grounded, drawing on action-oriented, engaged and participatory forms of research which aim to create knowledge in collaboration with those inside and outside the University. Our aim is to be politically engaged and policy relevant, and have a real impact on policy, and contemporary social issues and debates at a variety of scales. We believe that the city is an ongoing creation and an unfinished story in which interventions can be made to create more socially and ecologically just urban futures.

[TRAYECTORIA] The cluster runs the pioneering Master’s Programme in Activism and Social Change, and is involved in editing international critical journals such as City, and ACME.

Staff and PhD students within this group are actively involved in research, policy and activism in Leeds but also in other parts of the world amongst which: Tokyo, Belgrade, London, Buenos Aires, Yucatan (Mexico), Delhi, Mumbai, Rio de Janeiro.

We are involved in a variety of funded research projects the most relevant being: CONTESTED CITIES, an EU funded exchange research network between Latin-American and European universities, a project on housing privatisation and the experience of residents funded by the ESRC, a project on the impact of the global financial crisis on European cities funded by the Leverhulme Trust in collaboration with colleagues in Turin, Barcelona and Antwerp and a project on food justice and the city funded also by the ESRC.