Dr Centner is a sociologist, a geographer, an urbanist, and a development scholar whose diverse research portfolio revolves around a core interest in urban transformation at the nexus of social, spatial, and economic change. He focuses on how the built environment as well as people’s conditions and experiences shape each other. The dynamics of place inequality, place distinctiveness, and place promotion are central to his work across very different research sites. He is a multilingual researcher, using Spanish, Portuguese, and French extensively in his work.

Ryan received his PhD in Sociology, with an emphasis in Global Metropolitan Studies, from the University of California, Berkeley, and has had visiting teaching or research affiliations in Buenos Aires, Cape Town, Irvine, Los Angeles, Paris, Portland, and Salamanca. Before joining the LSE, he worked on the faculty at Tufts University in International Relations, Latin American Studies, Sociology, and Urban & Environmental Planning.

Currently, he is engaged in three major projects: first, co-editing with Prof Leonard Nevárez (Vassar College, USA) the Oxford Handbook of Urban Sociology (Oxford University Press), due for publication in 2025; second, collaborating with Dr Natchee Blu Barnd (University of California, Santa Barbara, USA) on the People’s Guide to Portland (University of California Press), a social history of the city; and, third, a comparative ethnography of expatriates in Buenos Aires, Dubai, and London. His published work has appeared in the journals City & Community; Contexts: Sociology for the Public; Environment & Planning A: Economy & Space; Environment & Planning C: Politics & Space; Geoforum; the International Journal of Cultural Policy; the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research; Local Environment; the Nordic Journal of Urban Studies; and Political Power & Social Theory.

Every spring, he leads the LSE Geography & Environment undergraduate field course in Portland, Oregon, USA, focusing on four broad themes: (1) local innovation and regional development; (2) housing, gentrification, and homelessness; (3) legacies of the settler-colonial city; and (4) interventionist urban and environmental planning. Field teaching is at the heart of Ryan’s approach to the educational enterprise. Before he organised the Portland field course, he designed and implemented repeated educational trips to Cape Town, Havana, Geneva, Lyon, and New York City.

Ryan has also served in many roles for academic organisations, including thematic groups within the American Sociological Association, the American Association of Geographers, and the Royal Geographical Society. He has been an associate editor for the journal City & Community; currently he is on the editorial board of the Nordic Journal of Urban Studies and Contexts: Sociology for the Public, where he is the photo essay editor. Vivid urban photography is one of his passions; images can tell so many stories, as well as opening up countless questions worth exploring.

Research

Thematic areas:

• aviation (airlines and airports)
• infrastructure
• migration
• place promotion
• redevelopment
• research methods (especially fieldwork)
• “territories” and other quasi-territorial entities
• urban geographies
• urbanism

Research locations:

• Cascadia (or, the Pacific Northwest of the USA and Canada)
• Latin America (especially Argentina, Brazil, and Cuba)
• the Middle East (especially Lebanon, Turkey, and the UAE)
• Africa (especially Ethiopia, Kenya, Nigeria, and South Africa)
• the “American” Pacific (especially Guam, Hawai’i, and the countries and territories of Micronesia)
• London

Advising

Completed PhD students:

• Dr Ulises Moreno-Tabárez, now based at the Departments of Humanities and Sustainable Development Management, Universidad Autónoma de Guerrero, Mexico.
• Dr Pablo Navarrete-Hernández, now based at the School of Architecture and Landscape, University of Sheffield, UK

Current PhD students:

• Awohouedji, Émmanuel: Thesis title, “A Street called Hope: Spectacular Development and Everyday Masculinities in Urban Bénin”
• Bertelli, Lucrecia: Thesis title, “Feminist Geographies from the Slum: Violence, Care, and Place-Making in Buenos Aires”
• Hopkins, Cata: beach redevelopment, diasporic investments, Nigeria, urban planning
• Mapukata, Zo: Black geographies, Johannesburg, London, urban geographies
• Öğüt, Tuna: Istanbul, urban planning & politics, planning
• Timan, Frida: Thesis title, “The Permitting City: Affective Lives of Permissive Legal Rule in Settler-Colonial Vancouver”

Dr Centner welcomes applications from potential PhD students interested in the following topics and areas:

• urban innovation, development, and inequality in Cascadia
• development and planning in “territories” of the US or other powerful countries with non-sovereign, non-integrated territorial possessions
• aviation and related infrastructure in Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, the Pacific, or the western USA/Canada

Teaching

Current:

• Contemporary Debates in Human Geography & Urban Studies
• Field Course in Cascadia
• Fieldwork Methods in Geography & Environment
• Urban Geography & Globalisation
• Urban Transformations

Previous teaching:

• Cities of the Global South
• Globalisation & Social Change
• International Urban Policy, Planning & Development
• Islam & Europe
• Qualitative Research Methods
• Sociology of Leadership
• Sociology of the Built Environment
• Urban Development & Planning in Africa
• Urban Sociology

Publications

Centner, Ryan, and Mara Nogueira. 2024. ‘Geographies of Entitled Anger: Revanchist Populism in Brazil and Beyond’. Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space 42(4):501–8. doi: 10.1177/23996544241254249.

Centner, Ryan. 2023. ‘Imaginative, Extroverted Havana’. Contexts 22(3):48–61. doi: 10.1177/15365042231192500.

Centner, Ryan. 2021. ‘A Very Nordic Set of Concerns? Visionary Circumspection and Theoretical Conversations with the Rest of the World’. Nordic Journal of Urban Studies 1(1):19–41. doi: 10.18261/issn.2703-8866-2021-01-02.

Centner, Ryan. 2020. ‘On Not Being Dubai: Infrastructures of Urban Cultural Policy in Istanbul & Beirut’. International Journal of Cultural Policy 26(6):722–39. doi: 10.1080/10286632.2020.1811249.

Centner, Ryan. 2013. ‘Distinguishing the Right Kind of City: Contentious Urban Middle Classes in Argentina, Brazil and Turkey’. in Locating the Right to the City in the Global South. Routledge.

Centner, Ryan. 2012. ‘Microcitizenships: Fractious Forms of Urban Belonging after Argentine Neoliberalism’. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 36(2):336–62. doi: 10.1111/j.1468-2427.2011.01050.x.

Centner, Ryan. 2012. ‘Moving Away, Moving Onward: Displacement Pressures and Divergent Neighborhood Politics in Buenos Aires’. Environment and Planning A 44(11):2555–73. doi: 10.1068/a44440.

Centner, Ryan. 2012. ‘Techniques of Absence in Participatory Budgeting: Space, Difference and Governmentality across Buenos Aires’. Bulletin of Latin American Research 31(2):142–59. doi: 10.1111/j.1470-9856.2011.00658.x.

Centner, Ryan. 2010. ‘Spatializing Distinction in Cities of the Global South: Volatile Terrains of Morality and Citizenship’. Political Power and Social Theory 21:281–98. doi: 10.1108/S0198-8719(2010)0000021016.

Centner, Ryan. 2008. ‘Places of Privileged Consumption Practices: Spatial Capital, the Dot-Com Habitus, and San Francisco’s Internet Boom’. City & Community 7(3):193–223. doi: 10.1111/j.1540-6040.2008.00258.x.

More about Ryan

Get to know Ryan a little more through our Spotlight series.