Profile Information

Leader: Dr Sarah Leaney  Deputy Leader: Dr Roxana Cavalcanti

Responding to the challenges of growing inequalities and understanding spaces demand attention to the social, historical and political relations in which injustices are situated. This research and enterprise group has the central task of supporting critical research that examines the legacies of colonialism, structural inequalities, capitalist urbanisation and the politics of gender, sexuality, race and class. We are concerned with injustices across a range of social spaces and how they intersect, but also how they are represented and resisted. Our work focuses on the injustices and resistance that emerge through an interplay of:

•   Citizenship and political struggles;
•   Uneven terrains of the city, including privatisation and gentrification, spatial dispossession, temporal exclusions;
•   Social city of differentiation, interaction, territoriality and liminality including issues of, housing segregation, homelessness and violence;
•   Unequal control and regulation in cities including criminalisation, policing, command and control, neighbourhood beats, security, risk management and surveillance;
•   Injustices of the cultural imaginations, experiences and design of the city;
•   Mobile injustices and migrations within and between cities; and
•   Resistance in the form of everyday practices and through urban social movements.

This REG aims to explore contemporary, interdisciplinary, critical theory across sociology, criminology, psychology, social policy, politics and the humanities, engaging with contemporary challenges and as such promoting world leading and impactful research that will inspire researchers, enhance the reputation of the university, attract research funding, support early career researchers and PGRs. The REG has the following objectives:

•   To provide a network to support research activities related to cities, injustice and resistance
•   To enhance the reputation of the university by establishing links with leading researchers and research groups both nationally and internationally
•   To develop links with policy-makers, community and campaign groups in seeking ways to create impacts from member’s research
•   To support ECRs and PGRs in developing research and enterprise opportunities
•   To organise events that are open to the wider research community in order to stimulate debate and develop collaborations.