Date: Wednesday 16 May 2012
Time: 6.30-9pm
Venue: Wolfson Theatre, New Academic Building
Speakers: Dr Shakuntala Banaji, Dr Vandana Desai, Dr Fatima El-Issawi, Jamal Osman, Susan Parnell, Dr Scott Rodgers
Chair: Suzanne Hall

As the world population urbanises, it is crucial that we critically examine how the media invites us to "see" cities. Visible Cities will bring together academics and journalists to critically examine the ways in which cities in developing countries are currently portrayed and consider alternatives.

Dr Shakuntala Banaji is a lecturer in the Department of Media and Communications at the LSE. Her research interests include the meaning, history and textual study of cinema, particularly South Asian media and Hindi films; the socio-political contexts of audiences, representations of gender and ethnicity; tensions between popular and elite media; internet cultures; online civic participation; young people and cultural identities. She is the editor of South Asian media cultures: audiences, representations, contexts (2010).

Dr Vandana Desai is a senior lecturer in the geography department at Royal Holloway. She conducts cross-disciplinary research on infrastructure and security of tenure in slums; aging, livelihoods and poverty; and gender and development, with a regional focus on South Asia.

Fatima El-Issawi is a visiting fellow at POLIS, the journalism and society think tank in the Department of Media and Communications at the London School of Economics. She is leading a research project on ‘Arab revolutions: Media Revolutions’ looking at the transformations in the Arab media industry under transitional political phases within the current uprisings. She has over 15 years experience covering the Middle East for international media outlets, including the BBC World Service, Asharq al Awsat, Agence France Presse, and An Nahar in Lebanon. She also works as an independent journalist, analyst and trainer for journalists in the Arab world.

Jamal Osman is an award-winning independent journalist and filmaker focusing on East Africa, including extensive work in Somalia. He has produced stories for Channel 4 and the Guardian, and is the recipient of the Royal Television Society (RTS) Independent Award 2012, the Amnesty International Gaby Rado Memorial Award 2010, the news story of the year prize at the Foreign Press Association (FPA) Awards 2009. His work for the Guardian on Al-Qaida's aid distribution in Somalia was recently shortlisted for the 2012 Broadcast Digital Awards "Best News of Current Affairs Content".

Dr Susan Parnell is an urban geographer in the Department of Environmental and Geographical Sciences at the University of Cape Town and is the Director of the 'CityLab' at the African Centre for Cities. She is currently the Leverhulme Visiting Professor at UCL. Her research interests include contemporary urban policy research (local government, poverty reduction and urban environmental justice). Sue is also on the boards of several local NGOs concerned with poverty alleviation, sustainability and gender equity in post-apartheid South Africa.

Dr Scott Rodgers is a lecturer in Media Theory in the Department of Media and Cultural Studies at Birkbeck. His research interests include the idea of a specifically 'urban' politics or public culture, and especially its constitution through media and processes of mediation and the ways in which urban life has been a longstanding focus for, as well as a milieu of, professional and amateur journalism. In 2008 he hosted a two day workshop on media practices and the political spaces of cities entitled "Mediapolis".

Dr Suzanne Hall is an urban ethnographer, and has practised as an architect and urban designer in South Africa. Her research and teaching interests include social and economic forms of inclusion and exclusion, urban multiculture, the imagination and design of the city, and ethnography and visual methods. She is a recipient of the Rome Scholarship in Architecture (1998-1999) and the LSE's Robert McKenzie Prize for outstanding Ph.D. research (2010). She co-edited (with Dinardi and Fernández) Writing Cities (2010, LSE), and her research monograph, City, street and citizen: The measure of the ordinary, is forthcoming.

Suggested hashtag for this event for Twitter users: #visiblecities

This event is free and open to all. Pre-registration recommented, through Eventbrite. Remaining spaces will be first come, first served . For any queries email Carrie Baptist on c.baptist@lse.ac.uk or call 07587818425.

Further information can be found on the Facebook page.

Podcast & Video

A podcast and video of this event is available to download from Visible Cities: International Media Portrayals of Cities in the Global South.

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