VI Midterm Conference: “Decentered Cities: Overlooked Urban Narratives and Shifting Centralities”
September 3-5, 2025, Coimbra
In a world increasingly shaped by rapid urbanization, environmental challenges, forced migration, increasing socio-economic inequalities and the rise of extreme right-wing movements, technological transformations, and shifting social dynamics, European urbanized and urbanizing areas stand at the forefront of societal change. Both are shaped by complex and dynamic relations that challenge traditional hierarchies. Rather than static categories of centre and periphery, these concepts are fluid and relational, shaped by social, economic, cultural, and political processes. This conference seeks to explore how urban spaces navigate these processes, with special attention to traditionally silenced groups simultaneously pushed to the urban peripheries and to the margins of power and action in the public space. However, peripheries are much more than inactivity and absence, being deeply interconnected with broader urban systems, often acting as sites of creative counter-narratives, resistance and transformation. Old and new examples show how urban centres can rise, decline and re-emerge, while peripheral areas may become central in their own right. By focusing on these shifting and postcolonial dynamics, we also aim to clarify how cities and urban regions reframe their past heritage and negotiate their roles within regional, national, and global networks.
Sessions
1. Exploring Urban Peripherization in Europe Through the Lens Of Neighborhood and Neighborhood Effect
2. Beyond Words: Creative Re/presentation to Rethink Urban ‘Marginality’ and ‘Peripheralisation’
3. Creativity and Urban Regeneration: Building Inclusive Cities and Addressing Social Inequality and Insecurity
4. Wartime Cities: Resistance, Creativity, Resilience
5. Culture, Urban Regeneration and Peripheries: Rethinking a Complex and Ambiguous Relationship
6. Intervening in the Urban World. Residents, Activist Groups and General Public as Stakeholders in The Processes of Civic Participation
7. Exploring Financialisation and Urban Austerity in Ordinary Cities: A Global to Local Perspective
8. Life Course Dynamics and Contemporary Residential Mobilities: People, Places and Practices Across Urbanized and Urbanizing Spaces
9. Digital Neighbourhoods, Overlooked Communities? Online Communication, Social Capital, and the Reconfiguration of Social and Spatial Distances
10. The Relationship between Urban Social Infrastructures and the Public Life of Cities
11. Spatial Discontinuity and Urban Identity
12. Beyond core and periphery: Relational histories, urban heritage, and postcolonial geographies in Portugal and beyond
13. Book discussion / Author meets critics session with open Round Table: The Research Handbook on Urban Sociology (2024, Edward Elgar)
14. Open Track (abstract not aimed for a specific session
Most panels will follow a traditional format based on an open call for abstracts (expectedly 15-20 minutes for each presentation with time slots of 90 minutes). Nonetheless, some sessions will have other formats (see the description of each panel).
ESA membership is not mandatory, but members benefit from reduced conference fees!
You can contact the sessions chair(s) about the session topics and contents (see their e-mail addresses in each session description) or the conference organising committee (rn37.esa@gmail.com) for logistical info.
II Summer School for Young Urban Scholars (September 1-2, 2025, Figueira da Foz)
Figueira da Foz, September 1-2
This initiative is designed for PhD students and young non-tenured researchers in urban studies. Building on the success of the first edition held in Genoa in 2023, this second edition continues our commitment to providing an enriching space for developing research skills, fostering interdisciplinarity, and engaging with renowned scholars in urban sociology.
Activities of the Summer School will include:
1. Keynote Lectures;
2. Methodological Workshops : a) Mixed methods, combining qualitative and quantitative methods, fieldwork and digital data in urban studies research; b) Visual methods focusing on affective cartography;
3. Roundtables: a) Academic integrity and ethical issues in research; b) Places of speech and diversity of narratives; c) Participatory approaches;
4. Sharing Research: Young scholars share and debate their papers withpeers and senior scholars;
5. Publish do not perish: Researchers and librarians share information andpractical knowledge of useful techniques, practices of writing, and interactingwith academic publishers.
Applicants must submit to rn37.esa@gmail.com the following documents:
1. A motivation letter (max 2 pages) outlining their interest in the Summer School and how it aligns with their research goals.
2. A CV (max 5 pages) highlighting academic and researchachievements.
More details about contents, deadlines and fees on the attached file:
We are looking forward to seeing you all in Portugal!
Blog: https://esarn37.hypotheses.org/
Facebook: www.facebook.com/esarn37/
E-mail: rn37.esa@gmail.com