This discussion brought together SEAC Associates for a cross-disciplinary discussion harnessing insights from across Urban Studies, Anthropology, and Geography. The event was inspired by the recent publication of How People Compare and discussed comparative practice: how we understand uneven power relations; how, why and with what consequences diversely situated groups of people make comparisons with and between each other. The event was recorded and the video is available here.
Speaker and Chair Biographies:
Dr Hans Steinmüller is Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology, LSE and a specialist in the anthropology of China. He has conducted long-term fieldwork in Hubei Province (central China) and in the Wa hills of the China-Myanmar border. Publications include the monograph Communities of Complicity (Berghahn 2013), and more recently special issues on Governing Opacity (Ethnos 2023) and Crises of Care in China Today (China Quarterly 2023). He is editor of Social Analysis and convenor of the MSc programme 'China in Comparative Perspective'.
Dr Catalina Ortiz is Associate Professor in Building and Urban Design in Development, The Bartlett Development Panning Unit, UCL. Dr Otiz holds a PhD in Urban Planning and Policy from the University of Illinois at Chicago as Fulbright scholar and a Master’s in Urban and Regional Studies and a Bachelor in Architecture from the National University of Colombia. Dr Ortiz's professional experience of over a decade focuses on teaching, research and consultancy linked to international organizations, national and local governments around urban projects and spatial planning issues in Latin America.
Dr Yimin Zhao is Assistant Professor in Urban Planning and Management, School of Public Administration and Policy, Renmin University of China. Trained as a Human Geographer, he is interested in spatial politics and urban political economy in China’s urban transformation. After previous investigations on Beijing’s green belts and the Jiehebu area, his current research develops along two lines of inquiry, one focusing on the infrastructural lives of authoritarianism and the other looking into the urban mechanisms of “Global China”.
Prof. Hyun Bang Shin (@urbancommune) is Professor of Geography and Urban Studies at the London School of Economics and Political Science and directs the LSE Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre. His research centres on the critical analysis of the political economy of speculative urbanisation, gentrification and displacement, urban spectacles, and urbanism with particular attention to Asian cities. His books include Planetary Gentrification (Polity, 2016), Neoliberal Urbanism, Contested Cities and Housing in Asia (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), Exporting Urban Korea? Reconsidering the Korean Urban Development Experience (Routledge, 2021), and The Political Economy of Mega Projects in Asia: Globalization and Urban Transformation (Routledge, forthcoming). He is Editor of the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, and is also a trustee of the Urban Studies Foundation.