On Monday, 17 April join the School of Environment, Education and Development for our spring inaugural lectures with Professor Tanja Müller and Professor Martin Hess from 4.30 - 6.30pm.
Our inaugural lectures provide an opportunity for newly appointed professors to present a fascinating insight into their research and highlight the latest developments in their discipline.
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Tanja Müller, Professor of Political Sociology
Activist city-zenship: subversive interpretations of citizenship
In this presentation, Professor Tanja Müller will discuss the activist turn in citizenship studies. Specifically, exploring the notion of activist citizenship as a means to forge solidarity and conviviality in the geographical space of the city. In such a conceptualisation, the figure of the migrant or the stranger, through their sheer presence in a specific geographical space, enacts a politics against frontiers and exclusions. Müller argues that the concept of activist citizenship is analytically and empirically useful in revealing the performance of rights claims. Additionally, individual and personal journeys can be read as acts of contentious politics and resistance. Müller will end with some reflections on their own personal journey and what it says about the contestation of exclusions.
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Martin Hess, Professor of Economic Geography
(Un)Making Connections: On Global Production Networks, Dis/associations and Deglobalisation
Global Production Networks (GPNs) have in the last two decades become an object of substantial academic enquiry and increasing interest to policy makers and NGOs. They connect firms, states, labour and civil society in complex, politically contested ways. Shaping geographies and societies at various scales, GPNs produce variegated and often problematic developmental outcomes. In this lecture, Professor Martin Hess will discuss how GPN connections are forged, how they and their geographies are often strategically hidden or emphasised by firms along the value chain, and how they might unravel in the face of recent geopolitical events, crises, technological and climate change. The lecture ends with a brief personal reflection on the value of global knowledge production networks.
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Following the lectures, guests will have the opportunity to ask questions to our speakers before being invited to join us for drinks and networking from 6.00 - 6.30pm.
Please register to attend via Eventbrite: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/school-of-environment-education-and-development-inaugural-lectures-tickets-541141106617
