I am pleased to receive an European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant award under the EU Horizon 2020 Programme, to spend 5 years on a major research programme across 3 continents. I will be leading a project on ‘Regional futures’, focusing on three rapidly growing metropolitan regions across the global south, which are…Continue reading “News and events”
A blog on gender, citizenship and urban life
Professor Ayona Datta
I am Professor in Human Geography in University College London. My research interests are in the politics of urban transformations in the global south, with a particular focus on gender and citizenship. For my contributions to our understanding of smart cities, I received the BUSK MEDAL from Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) in 2019.
PUBLIC EXHIBITION AND CONFERENCE
I am excited to announce the launch of our free public exhibition titled ‘Learning from Small Cities’ and accompanying conference…
New Publication: Curating #AanaJaana
Curating #AanaJaana: gendered authorship in the ‘contact zone’ of Delhi’s digital and urban margins NEW #OPENACCESS PUBLICATION IN CULTURAL GEOGRAPHIES.…
New Publication: Apps, Maps and War Rooms
Our Urban Pulse review article (written with Arunima Ghoshal, Anwesha Aditi, Arya Thomas and Yogesh Mishra) for Urban Geography “Apps, maps…
Films and videos of talks
Mumbai’s road to global city status has been marked by the construction of flyovers and roads. Apart from increasing the speed with which the city’s new arrivals travel from its domestic/international airport straight to the business district, these infrastructure projects also enable Mumbai as an aspiring global city to make its marginal spaces and citizens invisible to these new arrivals in the city. City bypassed presents the story of Mumbai’s urban renewal as seen from Byculla, a multicultural inner-city neighbourhood symbolically and physically bypassed by road infrastructure projects along Mumbai’s journey to global city status.
Please click here to watch the film ‘City Bypassed‘
City Bypassed
Malegaon, a small town near Nashik, Maharashtra, is driven solely by the power loom industry and is forgotten by the state and private sector since the bomb blasts of 2006. Through the eyes of its residents, local activists and civil society members, City Forgotten tells the story of Malegaon’s fall from the Manchester of India to a town in decline, where its women and minorities continue to aspire for and claim their constitutional rights to education despite the lack of any real prospects for its future generations.
Please click here to watch the film ‘City Forgotten’
City Forgotten
Is our understanding of urban infrastructure changing? Do we need to move beyond discussions about ‘smart cities’ and digital innovation? What pathways exist for the city of the future?
Please click here for British Academy film on ‘Habitat and Living in Plural Cities’. In conversation with Prof. Mathew Gandy and Prof. Simon Marvin.
Habitat and Living in Plural Cities
If you were to visit any Indian city today there is one thing that would strike out immediately. It is not poverty – the clichéd lens with which westerners approach the global south. To an eye fatigued by austerity images in the west, the continuous and frenzied construction activity across Indian cities would be a lasting memory of your visit. The claim is that India is rising. Each city, each district, each regional state is reinventing itself. From steel girder to fibre optic cable, from buses to BRT, from rail to monorail, from roads to expressways, from ethernet to wifi. One smartphone, one flyover, one superhighway, one mega-project, one smart city at a time.
Please click here to watch Open Day talk in Thoughtworks.
Hashtag Citizenships
Resilience decoded: Multiple dimensions of vulnerabilities in the smart city
UN ECOSOC, 2018 Integration Segment, 20th Plenary meeting. 1st May 2018, New York.
Please click here to listen to my talk.
the city inside out 