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Survival Infrastructures under COVID19 in India
This is the fourth podcast in the UCL Institute of Advanced Studies series ‘Life in the Time of Coronavirus’ in which specialists from arts, humanities and social sciences, think about the questions that the virus poses to our ways of life, of being and self understanding, both now and in the past. In this contribution Ayona Datta, Professor of Human Geography, thinks about survival infrastructures, and their collapse or dysfunctionality in the context of the mass exodus and precarity of migrant workers, forced to forsake the city because of India’s lockdown.
PI Ayona Datta at the World Urban Forum 2020
Principal investigator, Prof. Ayona Datta was invited by UN-Habitat to speak at the fourth dialogue plenary session on “Frontier technologies and Innovation for Inclusive, Sustainable and Resilient Smart Cities”. Click here to read more.
#AanaJaana [#ComingGoing] Exhibition Story Map
Explore our 'Gendering the Smart City' #GSCProject #AanaJaana gendered data in smart cities Story Map created by Visual Voice in partnership with our participants ‘Khadar Ki Ladkiyan [Khadar Girls]', societal partners Safetipin and Jagori, and institutional partner the School of Planning and Architecture, New Delhi in India.
‘Khadar Ki Ladkiyan’ [Khadar Girls] Performance @ One Billion Rising #VDay Event
Find out more about our 'Gendering the Smart City' #GSCProject participant 'Khadar Ki Ladkiyan [Khadar Girls]' performance of their hip hop rap song during the One Billion Rising South Asia #VDay celebrations at Central Park, Connaught Place, New Delhi, India on 10th February 2019.
📸🏆 #AanaJaana [#ComingGoing] Selfie Photography Competition Winner
Find our more about the 'Gendering the Smart City' #GSCProject #AanaJaana [#ComingGoing] international Twitter selfie photography competition we organised to launch our 'Aana Jaana: Curating Women's Digital Stories of the City' exhibition at Mandi House metro station, New Delhi open from 1st to 31st January 2019 and have a look at the winning entry!
Indian women from the outskirts of Delhi are taking selfies to claim their right to the city
Selfies document women’s struggles and accomplishments, as they step out from their traditional roles in the home, into the male-dominated public realm of the city. Read 'Gendering the Smart City' #GSCProject Principal Investigator Dr. Ayona Datta's article on our findings from our WhatsApp diaries and 'Khadar Ki Ladkiyan [Khadar Girls]' music video initiatives in The Conversation.
Advisory Board Feedback Meeting
Find out more about our 'Gendering the Smart City' #GSCProject research network team feedback meeting with our Advisory Board in January 2019.
Digital | Visual | Cultural 2 – ‘Digital Visual/Publics’ Public Lecture @dvcultural #dvcultural
Find out more about ‘Gendering the Smart City’ #GSCProject Principal Investigator Dr. Ayona Datta’s and Co-Investigator Dr. Padmini Ray Murray’s talks at the Digital/Visual Publics ‘Visualising Digital Heritage, Futures, and Other Temporalities’ public lecture event on 8th January 2019.
Photo Essay on Madanpur Khadar JJ Colony
Explore the photo essay by photographer Rohit Madan featured in our 'Gendering the Smart City' #GSCProject exhibition entitled 'Art in Public Places - #AanaJaana: Curating Women's Digital Stories of the City' taking place at Mandi House metro station, New Delhi, India from 1st to 31st January 2019.
‘Khadar Ki Ladkiyan’ – An Exploration of Music as a Medium of Expression
Read about our new 'Gendering the Smart City' #GSCProject initiative producing 'Khadar Ki Ladkiyan [Khadar Girls]', a song and music video exploring young women's stories of urban mobility and safety co-produced with women participants from Delhi's urban peripheries in this blog by Sunayana Wadhawan, Sound Artist.
Filming ‘Khadar Ki Ladkiyan’ [Khadar Girls]
Read about our new 'Gendering the Smart City' #GSCProject initiative producing 'Khadar Ki Ladkiyan [Khadar Girls]', a song and music video exploring young women's stories of urban mobility and safety co-produced with women participants from Delhi's urban peripheries in this blog by Nandan Latwal, Film director and editor.
Delhi Workshop: Gendering the Smart Safe City
Find out more about our first 'Gendering the Smart City' #GSCProject workshop entitled 'Gendering the Smart Safe City: Curating Digital Lives for a Feminist Urban Future' which took place at the India International Centre, New Delhi, India on 13th December 2018.
#MeToo has arrived in India, and it’s changing how technology is used to fight injustice
Read this The Conversation UK article entitled '#MeToo has arrived in India, and it’s changing how technology is used to fight injustice' by 'Gendering the Smart City' #GSCProject Principal Investigator Dr Ayona Datta, Dr Rakhi Tripathi, Centre for Digital Innovation, FORE School of Management and Dr Nabeela Ahmed, Department of Geography, King's College London.
Call for Papers: American Association of Geographers Annual Meeting ‘Gendering the Smart City: Towards Just & Feminist Urban Futures’ #aagDC
We welcome submissions for the 2019 American Association of Geographers meeting in Washington, DC April 3-7. This large interdisciplinary conference regularly attracts 6-8,000 attendees across a broad spectrum of disciplinary homes.
Gendering the Smart City: Towards just and feminist urban futures
Organisers: Ryan Burns, Ayona Datta, Nabeela Ahmed, Max Andrucki
The critical smart cities research agenda continues to develop insights into evolving relations between the digital, the urban, and socio-political process. Attention has broadened from taxonomies and ontological questions, to ideal-types and dominant epistemologies, to interrogating the “actually-existing smart city”. This trajectory has brought to the fore variegations and fissures in the politics of the smart city within which elements of social justice can appear, where smart city visions can adapt to and address low-tech infrastructures and where populations can contest the smart city’s often business-friendly, empiricist, governmentalizing, and neoliberal tendencies. Researchers have, indeed, recently illuminated smart city models that…
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Curating the Gendered City with WhatsApp
Read about our new 'Gendering the Smart City' #GSCProject activity producing WhatsApp diaries of young women's digital stories of mobility in India by Project Research Assistant Arya Thomas.
‘Fast Urbanism: Speed and Time at the Margins of the Indian City’ Keynote #CIG50 #CIG18Maynooth
Find out more about 'Gendering the Smart City' #GSCProject Principal Investigator Dr. Ayona Datta's keynote at the 50th Conference of Irish Geographers (CIG) from 10th to 12th May 2018.
Digital Geographies Working Group Symposium ‘Justice and the Digital’ #DGWGSymp
Find out more about 'Gendering the Smart City' #GSCProject Principal Investigator Dr. Ayona Datta's talk at the Digital Geographies Working Group Annual Symposium ‘Justice and the Digital’ on 6th July 2018.
Gendered Data in Smart Cities Story Map
Explore our 'Gendering the Smart City' #GSCProject gendered data in smart cities story map created by Sasha Mahajan, urban planner at Jacobs, in partnership with our societal partners Safetipin and Jagori in India.
New publication: The ‘Smart safe city’’
GENDERED TIME, SPEED AND VIOLENCE IN THE MARGINS OF INDIA’S URBAN AGE Speed is fundamental to shaping visions of the modern city and of contemporary urban life. Notions of speed and acceleration have produced distinct conceptualisations of rapid urbanization as a rush towards progress and opportunity. In this paper, I examine what speed looks like … Continue reading New publication: The ‘Smart safe city’’
New openaccess publication: ‘Thick time’
EXPERIMENTS WITH FEMINIST URBAN FUTURES IN COMMUNITY PODCASTS This paper develops the concept of ‘thick time’ through podcast experiments that foreground feminist voice, speech and aurality. Drawing upon William Kentridge’s notion of ‘thick time’, this paper draws upon gendered experiences of struggles that are accumulated over generations, reinforced through technologies of timekeeping and time-management, leading … Continue reading New openaccess publication: ‘Thick time’
New openaccess publication: Curating #Aanajaana
GENDERED AUTHORSHIP IN THE ‘CONTACT ZONE’ OF DELHI’S DIGITAL AND URBAN MARGINS This paper examines the curation of a month-long public exhibition titled #AanaJaana [#ComingGoing] in one of New Delhi’s busiest metro stations, as a form of self-authorship by young women from its digital and urban margins. #AanaJaana [#ComingGoing] is a metaphor for journeys, communications, … Continue reading New openaccess publication: Curating #Aanajaana
New publication: Self(ie) governance
Self(ie)-governance: Technologies of intimate surveillance in India under COVID19 My commentary article for Dialogues in Human Geography "Self(ie)-governance: Technologies of intimate surveillance in India under COVID19" has been published. This article emerges in response to the proliferation of selfie based quarantine apps in the wake of the COVID19 pandemic and is a development of my ongoing fascination with … Continue reading New publication: Self(ie) governance
New publication: Survival infrastructures
SURVIVAL INFRASTRUCTURES UNDER COVID19 IN INDIA I grew up hearing stories of Calcutta during the Bengal Famine of 1943 from my grandmother. The famine was an artificially created disaster under the watchful eyes of the British colonial government who denied Indian farmers access to food stocks, resulting in starvation and death – a genocide of about … Continue reading New publication: Survival infrastructures
Gendering the Smart City 