Call for Applicants
"The Spatial Turn in Questions of Justice"
Social Justice and The City Program
Issam Fares Institute
American University of Beirut
Does your research bring up issues of social or spatial (in)justice? Does it invoke social issues such as unemployment, mobility problems, unaffordable or dysfunctional services, or ingredients of the city such as housing, infrastructure, parks, and more? Do you look at how such social issues or the organization of these ingredients is influenced by planning, government policies, laws and regulations, and/or people’s practices? Do you wonder how they materialize spatially in relation to income distribution or how income distribution relates to them? More generally, do you think about how the fabric of space and its organization are intertwined with exclusion, inclusion, or social segregation? Are you investigating any of the mechanisms that cause/enact spatial (in)justice… or do you inquire whether there is a reciprocal relation between the dynamics of economic exclusion/inclusion and existing laws and regulations? And, at a more general level, what do issues of spatial (in)justice tell us about the political, economic and social relations that structure a society and the production of space? How are social and spatial justice related?
We invite advanced master’s as well as PhD-students and other young researchers from all social science disciplines (e.g. sociology, anthropology, political science, geography, and others related fields) as well as students of urban planning and design to participate in an interdisciplinary conversation about space, justice, and spatial justice and the way these concepts inform their ongoing research. Designed in the format of an interactive workshop, the meeting will allow six researchers (or group of researchers) to present and discuss their research approach in the format of a closed meeting/ discussions.
Interested applicants are invited to submit an abstract of no more than 250 words and provide a brief indication of the stage their research (proposal, writing-up, fieldwork) to Marieke Krijnen at mk231@aub.edu.lb by May 24th, 2017. Six applicants will be invited to present their work, and all researchers who submit an abstract will be able to attend the seminar.
The seminar will include an introductory presentation by Professor Pierre Bergel and Professor Nicolas Bautès about notions of spatial justice. Together with Professors Mona Harb and Mona Fawaz, they will also be acting as discussants during the workshop.
The workshop is co-organized by the Social Justice and the City program at the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at AUB and the Space & Society research group at the University of Caen-Normandie/ESO-CNRS.