Spotlights

Albert, welcome! How does it feel to join LSE as a Visiting Visiting Professor in Practise?

It’s a real honour to receive the appointment as a Visiting Professor in Practise at LSE. I am both humbled and excited. I am especially thankful to Head of Department, Prof Hyun Bang Shin, for his guidance and advice. I feel very welcomed as I am just starting to meet incredible LSE faculty members such as Prof Christen Hilber, Dr Felipe Carozzi, Prof John Sidel, and others. A big thank you also goes to the incredible professional services staff members such as Sam, Tom, Zia, Catherine, Isobel and others who have gone out of their way to make me feel included and welcomed.

For me, as a professional business practitioner of the past 30 years, it is a real blessing to take a few weeks away from my regular environment in Asia and work on a few issues that are near and dear to me.

Even though I am continuing working full time, suffering from jet lag, and still need to shuttle back and forth between London and Taiwan/Vietnam a few times over the next few months, I feel both intellectually and physically liberated and invigorated. Business practitioners worldwide should treasure this incredible opportunity at LSE.

Can you share a bit about your research and what you'll be focusing on in the coming months?

As a Visiting Visiting Professor in Practise, my main task over the next few months is to research and summarise a unique sustainable urban development execution model that has worked very well in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. The Phu My Hung Saigon South Urban Development Project has been selected as one of the leading sustainable urban developments in the world by Harvard Business School (see Harvard Business Review July-August 2013).

In a span of 32 years, the original vision has transformed a swamp land, juxtaposed with some low yielding agriculture land, into a green, vibrant, sustainable urban centre that serves 250,000+ people with many newly created jobs and newly established education institutions.

As the world continues to urbanise, many more new urban centres still need to be built. But how to strike the right balance between nature and humanity, how to guide urban growth responsibly, and how to generate a virtuous cycle of growth are key issues that may generate additional benefits for the local societies at large. I hope the work that I carry out at LSE may be helpful to other urban planners, developers, and decision makers.

At the same time, I will devote time to discover and learn from my esteemed colleagues at LSE. I may also give a few guest lectures. Lastly, I hope I can eventually bring home new concepts and ideas by listening to good advice and critiques, by exchanging ideas, and by opening my heart and mind to this vibrant, dynamic, and knowledgeable community of LSE.

What are you most excited about exploring or experiencing in London during your time here?

I used to live and work in London as a Senior Associate / Vice President of Morgan Stanley more than 20 plus years ago. I am excited to be back and to show my family what living in London is like. I especially look forward to the start of the BBC Proms and to make time available to bring my family to listen to some of the greatest classical musicians performing in London together.

At this moment, UK and Europe are also going through a period a difficult changes and transitions, burdened with low economic growth, high youth unemployment, high energy prices, volatile trans-Atlantic relations, conflicts with Russia, unclear future prospects, and many other issues. Yet, humanity often rises to the challenge; and with sacrifice, make transformational decisions. Being in London this year also helps me better understand the contextual backgrounds and offers me a front row view on how ultimately some of these issues are presented, debated and decided.

I am very humbled by this appointment as a Visiting Professor in Practise at the London School of Economics, and very excited by this opportunity to learn, to excel, and to contribute.

Ana, you’re a new face in the department. How have you found settling in?

My first months at LSE have been nothing short of intense! I had the opportunity to teach two courses during the Autumn Term, and it has been a truly enriching experience. Interacting with students and discovering their varied interests has been a highlight of my time at LSE so far.

Settling in has been made easy by my colleagues and staff in the department, who have been very welcoming. I believe the department's collegiality is evident, with people taking the time to say hi or check in on how I am doing. Maybe it helps in this regard that my office is one of the first you see as you exit the lifts on the 4th floor.

Moreover, being part of the LSE community more broadly has been a fantastic experience. The variety of interesting events has left me spoiled for choice. It's inspiring to be surrounded by such a dynamic community, and I look forward to further immersing myself in the vibrant LSE life.

Can you tell us about any research projects you’re currently working on?

In broad strokes, my research explores spatial interactions of environmental and urban systems, using methods from applied microeconomics, data science, and remote sensing. Some of my current projects focus on understanding how diverse responses to floods can exacerbate economic disparities in both developed and developing country settings. Others explore feedback loops between environmental impacts and housing and land tenure, as well as the effects of emerging environmental technologies (such as carbon capture) on the air pollution faced by minority and low-income populations.

Ultimately, I aim for my research to contribute to our understanding of how adaptation to a changing climate and associated natural disasters can unfold in an unequal and heterogeneous world.

I am also eager to foster new collaborations with colleagues at LSE who share an interest in these topics. Please feel free to reach out if you'd like to discuss research further!

Favourite city you’ve visited?

I think most cities look wonderful on vacation when you see them through a lens of worry-free relaxation. Living in them for longer periods allows you to appreciate more interesting layers of what makes them unique.

I have been truly privileged to live in many different great cities — like New York, San Francisco, Amsterdam, Paris, Lisbon, Madrid, and now London. All of them have different things that I love about them.

However, the city that still has a special place in my heart is the city I grew up in, A Coruna, in northwestern Spain. It is a charming city with a rich maritime heritage — including what is considered the oldest lighthouse in Europe that is still in operation. Let me know if you ever visit, and I would be happy to recommend some places to eat amazing food!

Carolin, you’re a new face in the department. How are you finding your first few months?

My first four months here at LSE have been very exciting and full of new things to learn and getting to know so many fantastic new colleagues. At the same time, coming from Germany, it is challenging to start over in a new country and new academic environment, but there is great support within the department which helps a lot. I am very grateful for a smooth transition.

Currently, I am writing lectures for the economic geography section in our ‘Introduction to Geography’ undergraduate course. Being able to introduce first-year students to the amazing field of economic geography is thrilling!

Can you tell us a bit about your research interests?

My broader research interests revolve around explaining uneven development across space, its evolution, and livelihood outcomes, specifically in rural regions of Southern Africa, where I have conducted most of my research. My work as a critical economic geographer allows me to look beyond economic factors and take a more holistic perspective on the impact of globalisation on people and the environment, which brings up questions of power, exclusion, and unintended consequences for local and regional development.

I like to implement a people-centred approach. I am enthusiastic about mixed methods, and I try to engage in knowledge exchange across different actor groups in the places I work in as much as possible.

More specifically, I look at how local and regional economies are directly or indirectly linked to global value chains and how this affects sustainable, inclusive development outcomes. I completed my PhD on horticulture value chains in Namibia. This project explored the challenges and opportunities for rural development, particularly in relation to food security, biodiversity conservation, and social inclusion.

In my new project, I aim to link the sustainability potential of ‘shorter’ value chains resulting from increasing regionalisation on the African continent with climate change mitigation and adaptation. A major obstacle to inclusive regional development, as I have learned from the example of Southern Africa, is the lack of finance for local actors. Carbon markets hold the hope of closing the financing gap for climate change mitigation and adaptation. However, it remains questionable whether they will be accessible and beneficial to local value chain actors and who has the power to set the rules of the game in these growing markets.

What do you enjoy most about living and working in London?

The possibilities seem to be endless! There are so many interesting events in different departments with world-leading scholars, and new collaborations emerging naturally. I also enjoy the abundance of theatre, concerts, and musicals from all around the world. It is a very inspiring, diverse, and international environment both at LSE and in London as a whole. And an added benefit: I get to eat fish and chips whenever I want!

Apart from the buzzing energy and positive aspects of living and working in London, I am curious to learn more about London’s socio-economic inequalities, urban poverty, and colonial history which is very visible throughout the city.

What research have you been carrying out recently?

I have been working on housing problems and the economic impacts of land use planning. In the spring of 2021 a former MSc REEF student and I published a paper estimating the price paid for offices in London where there was a right automatically to convert the building to housing. We worked out this generated a premium of some 50% reflecting the extreme scarcity of housing in London.

I have also been working with a colleague and a PhD student collecting, then analysing, data for all houses built in Britain since 1995 covered by the National House Building Council’s guarantee – that’s the great majority of all houses. Our initial aim was to estimate the factors which determined the rate at which larger sites were ‘built-out’ – sometimes called the ‘construction-lag’ - although there is a lot more we plan to do with this exceptional data.

Again working with colleagues, I am finishing up a project designed to estimate the effect which ‘Town Centre First Policies’ - imposed in England in 1996 and intended to maintain shops in traditional town centres and facilitate the use of public transport and joint trips - have actually had on the length of shopping trips and the location of shops.

Also – really exciting for someone as old as I am – since June 2021 I have worked on three completely new but research related activities.

First as a consultant helping to design and take part in a 10-part BBC R4 documentary series on our housing crisis - A Home of Our Own.

The second was acting as an expert witness in a major planning enquiry on a proposal to build 800 houses on a derelict golf course with a London Zone 6 station adjoining it. I was asked to do this because of a report I did for the Centre for Cities in 2019.

And the third thing was working as a specialist advisor to the House of Lords Select Committee on the Built Environment for their report on meeting housing demand.

A couple of years ago, you celebrated 25 years in the Department. What are the highlights, and how has it changed?

Without question the highlight has been an ongoing one: how the department has been transformed, grown and thrived. In the early 1990s, the LSE was choosing between closing the Geography department and transforming it to create a new vision of what Geography, especially Geography at LSE, should be. The department had been slowly declining because the old model of a joint degree split between the LSE and Kings, was no longer viable. LSE had provided the social science and Kings the physical geography but joint working in the context of universities in the 1980s had become more and more difficult.

So the School came up with the idea of re-casting the department into a form consistent with the strengths of LSE: retaining ‘urban’ and planning, but a new focus on economic geography – with the emphasis on ‘economic’ – and the environment concentrating on environmental economics, environmental policy and management. In the early 1990s the department only had one Masters course – RUPS - and the remit was not just to recast the intellectual basis of the department but to develop new Masters and a flourishing research and PhD community.

So I – an urban economist – and Judith Rees – a social science based environmental scholar - were taken on to do this. We were incredibly lucky in who we were able to hire from the start. Our first were Andres Rodriguez-Pose, Gilles Duranton, Henry Overman and Eric Neumayer. Gilles – now one of the world’s leading urban/real estate economists – moved to the University of Pennsylvania after 10 years but the rest have had stellar careers at LSE.

This allowed us to create a portfolio of interlinked Masters courses, re-inforcing our undergraduate programmes and creating a big enough concentration of like-minded scholars to establish a flourishing PhD programme. Just one of these courses – the MSc in Real Estate Economics and Finance (based in applied urban economics and quantitative economic geography) – is probably the most successful course of its kind in the world. Last year 700 very highly qualified students applied to do it.

What do you like to do outside of your research?

Long distance walking and watching Arsenal. One of the great experiences of my life was walking coast to coast through the Pyrenees (mainly) on the GR10. And for better or worse I have followed Arsenal since I was 7 years old. And even managed to convert my wife.

Jessie, you’re a new face in the department. What are your first impressions of Geography & Environment, and of LSE more generally?

I first was introduced to the LSE campus years ago when I was doing research on an oral history collection at the library archives. I remember being impressed by the swirling architecture of the library atrium, and the location of the campus right next to the most historic bits of London. Since arriving to the department this September, I've been teaching online only, but my first virtual impressions have been so positive. The students are astonishingly brilliant, the staff have been so kind and welcoming despite the difficult pandemic circumstances, and the teaching and research in the department is exciting and challenging.

Can you tell us a little about your research and what led you to your field?

I became interested in housing and homelessness after working as a legal aid attorney in California, assisting people in eviction cases. Many clients would return repeatedly, stuck in an ongoing cycle of eviction and homelessness. Frustrated by the "band aid" work of eviction defence, I wanted to better understand the underlying causes that lead to displacement.

I came to geography after discovering the ground-breaking work of urban geographers who critique the politics of housing displacement and challenge stigma surrounding homelessness. As the crisis of homeless encampments was exploding across the US, I pursued a master's degree in geography examining the urban politics of encampments. In my doctoral work, I began researching memoirs and oral histories of homelessness to better understand how people who experience homelessness critique American housing and imagine alternate ways of living.

How do you like to relax and unwind?

I love cycling in London. It's one of the most beautiful cities I've ever lived in, and I'm always discovering new backstreets and hidden parks. I have a specific soft spot for south London and have lived in the south since arriving to London three years ago. Since the pandemic began, I've been occupying my spare time making cheesy art collages. I used to sing and play a bit of guitar with friends and am always looking to meet musicians in London who are similarly casual and unambitious!

Other than that, drinks with friends, dancing, and cooking are all great pleasures. I love watching cartoons to unwind, and these days am getting into sci-fi (am currently reading The Three Body Problem by Cixin Liu).

What are you currently researching?

I’m currently director of the What Works Centre for Local Economic Growth that aims to improve the cost-effectiveness of local economic growth interventions. As a result, I’m doing quite a lot of work to evaluate the impact of different local economic growth policies. But I try to keep doing some work on broader urban economics issues. For example, I’m just starting a new project on the lifecycle of urban land using amazing data for a 30m by 30m grid covering the whole of the continental United States. We used some similar data nearly 15 years ago to look at urban sprawl in the US and it will be interesting to see what’s changed. One thing that’s already clear – the incredible increase in computing power means we can now analyse the data from our desktops. Last time round it was far more difficult and much, much slower.

How do you divide your time between research and your duties as Director of What Works Centre for Local Economic Growth?

Badly! I’ve learnt a lot from the challenge of balancing research and policy, but the rhythm of the two activities is very different. Research evolves gradually, and feedback loops are slow.

In contrast, the What Works role involves a lot of work with both local and central government, that requires rapid reaction and where feedback loops are very fast. Fast feedback and constant newness make it very tempting to spend all my time on What Works, which would be a lot of fun, but not very consistent with my role at a leading research university. The last six months or so, I’ve adopted a new working rule to help fix this – I try to spend at least one hour every morning reading or writing something research related. Most days it seems to be working.

How do you like to relax?

Family and friends, books, beer (and British Military Fitness to sweat out the beer).

Laura, you have just got back from The American Association of Geographers 2018 Conference in New Orleans, how was it?

This was my first time attending the AAG and it was a really fascinating, if slightly overwhelming, experience. The AAG is the largest conference I have been to and it spanned across three hotels. There were really thought-provoking plenary lectures and so many interesting smaller sessions I often didn’t know which one to attend.

The conference was in New Orleans this year which meant that we were able to explore the city and to learn about the history of Louisiana. I was able to visit the Whitney Plantation Museum which, while harrowing, helped me to understand a lot more about the histories of slavery and racism in the USA (and beyond). Being in New Orleans also meant that there was incredible food and music throughout the French Quarter and beyond it, which meant that the 8am start times for the conference were a little tricky!

I co-organised a session with two other PhD students, Jordana Ramalho and Paroj Banerjee, called ‘Bodies and Spaces of and at Risk in the City’ and I also presented my work in the session too. My presentation was centred around the different ways in which state policies and the practices of employment agencies render domestic workers both of and at risk in Singapore.

We had a great turnout and the other presenters talked about some really interesting research, with topics varying from environmental racism in the USA to the removal of favelas in Brazil. Another of our colleagues, Jeanne Firth, acted as discussant and she did an amazing job of drawing out some of the emerging themes across our papers. Jeanne actually lives in New Orleans and her fieldwork is based in the region so she was also able to connect our discussions to contemporary and historical issues in Louisiana.

What first inspired your interest in urban studies?

That is actually quite a difficult question to answer. I suppose in some ways I really just fell in to the discipline by accident, because I was unsure exactly what I wanted to do! I took a year out to work and travel after finishing school but I knew I wanted to learn more and to go to university.

Growing up, I was really interested in the social sciences but I also loved art and design, so I was pretty torn about what academic/career path I might want to follow. Travelling in Central and Eastern Europe, and also a little in Asia, really cemented my desire to learn more about cities however, and so an urban planning and design degree seemed to be an appropriate middle ground between these interests.

After completing my BSc at UCL, and after working in practice for a short period, I realised that the thing I was actually most fascinated by was the urban studies classes I had taken, modules which addressed the everyday lives and experiences of people in cities. This fascination, paired with a dissatisfaction with the planning and design practices I was exposed to, spurred me on to complete my MSc which only cemented my desire to pursue a PhD.

What is the most memorable place you have visited?

Another difficult question! I don’t know if I could choose just one place because I try to learn something from every place I visit. I suppose the place that has left the greatest and most lasting impression on me is Singapore, where I carried out my fieldwork for my PhD. While it might not be my ‘favourite’ place, the people who I met and the experiences that I had there have changed my perspectives on the world.

While I do love cities and everything they have to offer, I also really love being in the countryside and by the beach; in much quieter places. A couple of years ago I visited Tromsø, Norway, within the Arctic Circle, and saw the Northern Lights which were breath-taking. I also loved trips where I have been camping and sleeping by lakes in New Zealand and part of central Europe, thinking about those places has a very calming effect on me.

That being said, one of my friends (Yi Jin, another Geography PhD student) just joked that perhaps my response should be the St. Clements building!

What are you currently working on in your research?

My work is moving in several different directions right now, but they’re all linked by a core interest in urban transformation at the nexus of social, spatial, and economic change. That’s to say that I focus on how the built environment as well as people’s conditions and experiences are linked together, always with a view to how shifting broader economic projects and circumstances mediate these.

More specifically, I am completing a longstanding ethnographic project on how three neighborhoods in Buenos Aires, Argentina, have fared in the long aftermath of IMF-sponsored reforms that reshaped the Argentine economy from the early 1990s onward. These were never “urban” reforms, but they have created a plainly urban legacy in terms of the redevelopment of places and the transformed livelihoods of Buenos Aires residents across the socioeconomic spectrum. I’m finishing a book that presents these “urban afterlives” as a way of understanding what these kinds of economic restructuring – sharing similarities with Greece and Puerto Rico, among other cases – leave in their local wake, well beyond the original intentions of policy.

Other streams of research I have been working on, in a range of sites, include:

1) Comparing the implementation of “the right to the city” as an idea, and often a law, across Latin American contexts, from São Paulo to Caracas to Santiago de Chile to Mexico City to Havana.

2) Examining the contentious nature of increasingly heterogeneous urban middle classes (which is emphatically plural) in Brazil, Turkey, and South Africa as rapidly changing middle-income countries.

3) Exploring the links between urban innovations, inequalities, and the everyday politics of what we might call the “self-regard” of cities. I look specifically at the three major urban areas of North America’s Pacific Northwest region – Vancouver, Seattle, and Portland – which are collectively hailed as green, creative, progressive, and hip; this reputation is clearly known to residents and is unavoidable in the daily experience of these places, which are plainly cities in love with themselves. As I come from Portland myself, I train a critical eye on how the distinct assemblage of innovations in each city exacerbates, or sometimes relies on, inequalities.

4) Tracing how the speculative expansion of aviation into new geographies is related to city-building through investments in infrastructure and the forging of new inter-urban linkages. I am particularly interested in the rapid proliferation of airline networks in Africa over the last decade, but I am interested in comparing these to transformations that have unfolded previously in parts of the Middle East and Latin America.

5) As I always find it important to do local research, wherever I may be based, I have begun an inquiry into how gentrification is specifically affecting LGBT nocturnal geographies – essentially, the spaces and nature of gay nightlife – in east London. This is part of a set of papers I am working on editing with collaborators at other institutions on “Gay Male Urban Spaces after Grindr & Gentrification.”

As organiser of the undergraduate field trip, what do you enjoy most about this experience?

I think fieldwork, and really digging into a local context, is one of the most rewarding – if challenging – experiences in the critical social sciences. And for geographers in particular, fieldwork is a must. I love to see the proverbial light bulbs go on in students’ heads as they begin to discover new understandings about a place, sometimes even a place they already thought they knew well.

A great joy of leading a field course is to be a part of that interpretive project; instructing in the field, and being able to make connections between theoretical or historical lessons and the visible stuff all around us in the moment is one of those amazing opportunities to make teaching really come alive.

What is your favourite film ?

This might seem a bit obscure, but it’s a movie that has resonated with me for a long time now: from Argentina, Daniel Burman’s Abrazo Partido (2004), usually translated as Lost Embrace. It’s a very funny but also moving story about personal relationships that manages to tie in history, geopolitics, economic globalization, immigration, and a lot of good Argentine sarcasm, all in an area very near where I conducted much of my fieldwork in Buenos Aires. And if you don’t speak Spanish, I can confirm from the various friends (and even some students) whom I’ve forced to watch the movie in the past, it’s still very good with subtitles!

We’ve reached the end of the academic year. What will you be working on over the summer?

This has been a very good year in terms of research. I have just finished up a project with colleagues on short-term letting and planning deregulation, which produced an academic paper and some interesting content in terms of a short film and an animation.

I will be working on a larger bid to put forward to funders on the ‘sharing’ or platform economy in London over the summer. There is so much rhetoric surrounding the sharing economy – both positive and negative – that it is hard to think about what sensible regulation might look like. Our project hopes to address this.

I will also be on sabbatical in the Michaelmas term so I am looking forward to re-working my optional course Planning for Sustainable Cities to get it ready for 2018-19.

What first inspired your interest in Urban Planning?
After university, where I studied politics, I lived in Austin, Texas. Two things spurred me on to study urban planning. The first was that I loved the neighbourhoods and the historic districts of Austin.  I was fascinated by the way certain neighbourhoods worked where others seemed to fail miserably in terms of both built form and as social space. I wanted to understand these processes better.

I was also in a terribly tedious job that filled me with dread each morning. So, when the opportunity came along to study for a Master’s degree in Community and Regional Planning I decided to do it. As a result, I have worked in both the US and the UK in planning and got my PhD in Urban Policy here in the UK. The result is that I now never dread going to work in the morning.

What do you enjoy outside of LSE and the department?
I enjoy doing a wide range of things – I like to go mudlarking on the river Thames – if you don’t know what this is think wellington boots and rubber gloves looking for treasure on the foreshore. My best find so far has been a shoe buckle from the 1760s but more regularly I find dead fish and trash.

I have also recently taken up learning to skateboard, which is something I always wanted to try but never did. I am not sure if taking this up in my 40s is the best plan but it is fun none the less – my goal is to be able to Ollie – my hope is to not break my neck.

What are you currently working on?

The biggest issue faced by the UK at the moment is Brexit. In academia we’re generally obsessed with migration, with good reason, but we’ve tended to overlook the experience of people who don’t move. But only a minority migrate – around 60% of the UK population lives within 20 miles of their place of birth. I’m particularly interested in people who don’t move, but whose local area experiences significant change – economic decline, large-scale migration or population loss. Does this make them more likely to vote for Brexit or a particular party, as a way of taking back control?

Another big issue the UK faces is stagnant real wages. A lot of this is driven by low paid work in low-productivity sectors. The government is currently working on an industrial strategy and targeting particular sectors could be an important part of that. I’m working on a project – led by Professor Anne Green at Warwick – which looks at which sectors perform particularly badly, and the type of interventions which might help reduce low pay. (Lots of the reports are available here.)

What is the best feature of the Department of Geography and Environment?

We’re really lucky here – LSE Geography never feels like an ivory tower, separated away from the rest of the world, but can have a real impact on the world outside. Just this morning, my colleague Hyun Bang Shin was on TV talking about the South Korean elections. The Department has some of the leading institutes working on public policy - the What Works Centre for Local Economic Growth is one example. We’re in a privileged position to study issues we think are important. Plus I have great colleagues and the students are top class.

What's the most memorable place you've visited?

When most of my colleagues head off to the mediterranean to get a tan, I normally go to the rainy, windswept Orkney islands – an archipelago just to the north of Scotland. It’s a beautiful place, with stunning views and clean air. The local whisky is also amazing. I’ll be honest, I wouldn’t have gone there out of choice, but my wife’s family are from there so I was made to visit. Now, if I don’t go once a year I really miss it.

We have reached the end of the academic year. What will you be working on over the summer?

I’ve just finished teaching an LSE Summer School course, An Urbanising World, together with my colleague Hyun Shin. We had a lot of fun, thanks to a great group of students, and I came away newly energised about my summer research plans.

Having just finished a long-term project on security, risk, and political life in Bogotá, Colombia, I’m starting to think ahead to what comes next. To help get the ideas flowing, I’ll be spending a good month or so making my way through a stack of new and exciting books, which have been impatiently winking at me from my bookshelf. I’ll be reviewing a couple of them, but for the most part I want to immerse myself in the latest stuff coming out of geography, anthropology, Latin American history, and urban studies.

I’ll also be reading everything I can find on Colombia’s most prominent and storied river, the Río Magdalena. As many will already know, a negotiated peace accord between the Colombian government and the FARC is on the horizon, and the country is anxiously anticipating the end of one of the world’s longest running armed conflicts. I’m particularly interested in the literal work going into building Colombia’s post-conflict future, and a major initiative to revive shipping traffic along the river is arguably one of many large-scale infrastructure projects motivated by the elusive promise of peace. I’ll be in Colombia in August and September to start interviewing people involved in the Río Magdalena project and to spend some time along the river itself, watching oil barges float downstream to the coast and dredging operations excavate centuries of sediment.
Colleagues at the Universidad de los Andes will also be kindly hosting an event to mark the launch of my recent book, so there will some time set aside for celebration, as well.

Your first book, Endangered City, has just been published. How did the book come about?

I’m always intrigued by that question, as well as by how I find myself answering it. In the preface, I tell the story of arriving in Bogotá for the first time in 2006. I was immediately struck by how often friends and strangers alike would go out of their way to inform me about the dangers of everyday life in the city. There was something oddly familiar about this, since it reminded me of how, as a kid, I had learned to navigate my own hometown of Philadelphia. It also seemed to be a particularly good example of a wider, perhaps global trend whereby cities are increasingly preoccupied with potential hazards lurking on the horizon. But this seemed paradoxical in Bogotá, since by all accounts the city was now far safer than it had been for quite a while, and urbanists and security experts from around the world were busy heralding its rebirth.

How, why, and to what effect do concerns about security and risk continue to shape the political life of the city?

That was the question I would spend years trying to answer. But this was only part of the story. I began my research at a time when many Colombians were justifiably wary of yet another gringo coming to study violence in their country.
One couldn’t ignore the turbulent and traumatic history of the armed conflict, but it felt necessary to look at what else was going on. So rather than studying violence and insecurity directly, I decided to come at these topics from an angle by thinking about threats and dangers of all kinds—especially those seen to originate in nature rather than society.

I made contact with the municipal housing agency, which was relocating populations out of areas defined as “zones of high risk” for landslides and floods. For me, this became a way to analyse how concerns about threat and danger, about security and risk, were reconfiguring what it meant to be an urban citizen. The rest is history (or geography), so to speak.

What do you think is unique about Geography and Environment at LSE?

I came to the LSE in 2012 after finishing a doctoral degree in anthropology at Stanford University. I was trained in a style of anthropology that took the discipline’s history and methodology quite seriously, but that also encouraged engagement with a wide spectrum of research topics and intellectual traditions.

I spent a lot of time reading and learning from the work of geographers, and often felt that had I not ended up studying anthropology, geography could have been an equally good fit. So when I joined the Department of Geography and Environment at the LSE, to a certain degree I suspected I would feel right at home. What I didn’t expect was for the department to be as inclusive, collegial, and supportive a place to work. I attribute this to the fact that we’re such a diverse group of staff and students from all over the world with an astoundingly wide range of backgrounds and interests: from bona fide, card-carrying geographers to those with training in economics, sociology, urban planning, architecture, development studies, social policy, and much more.

I may be the lone anthropologist, but I’m never lonely. For one’s disciplinary training is rarely the primary identifier that determines how we interact with one another. I often find myself wondering what, then, holds us together—what it is that we all, to some degree, share—and I’ll go ahead and hazard a guess: a strong commitment to generating unconventional insights into questions of public and political relevance on the grounds of rigorous empirical work that takes seriously the specificities of space and place. I’m sure many of my colleagues in the department would put it differently, and perhaps even disagree—but I bet they would disagree with a smile.

You’ve just submitted your dissertation - congratulations! What was your research about, and how did studying in the department support or shape your project?

Thank you so much! My dissertation was a critical discourse analysis of dystopian fiction, examining how the genre’s conventions often reinforce systemic racism and shape the way we think about power and resistance. When I came across a study that found only 6% of dystopian protagonists are people of colour, it really made me question: can themes of justice and oppression truly be explored if race is left out of the conversation? Dystopian fiction often draws from real histories of colonialism and marginalisation but reframes those struggles through white lenses. I focused on The Hunger Games and The Handmaid’s Tale, two hugely influential novels that, in different ways, embody this tension. My aim was to unpack how these stories reflect and distort racialised experiences of resistance.

The inspiration came in my second year during GY212 (Pathways in Human Geography), where we looked at ‘literary geography’, a sub-discipline I hadn’t heard of before. I’ve always been obsessed with reading (especially dystopia, as a teen) and write fiction as a hobby, so I was very excited to combine literature with the symbolic and spatial insights of geography. And my friends think it’s hilarious that I wrote my LSE dissertation on The Hunger Games!

I’m incredibly grateful to the department for their support, especially Claire Mercer, Jessie Speer, and Laura Antona. They offered thoughtful guidance, kind encouragement, and gave me the confidence to really push the boundaries of my research. I genuinely couldn’t have done it without them.

You’ve contributed to some brilliant projects during your time in the department - from writing about 130 years of trailblazing women to supporting Romola Sanyal’s research as an Undergraduate Research Fellow. What was it like working on these projects, and what did you take away from the experience?

Honestly, the department has offered so many incredible opportunities over the past three years. I’ve always known I wanted to work in research, so I was excited to keep developing those skills through projects that felt genuinely meaningful. One of the most impactful experiences was working with Romola Sanyal; I gained insight into the global humanitarian industry and got a behind-the-scenes look at how academia operates, which I found fascinating as someone hoping to pursue further study in the future. She was so patient and generous with her time, and I learned a huge amount during that research fellowship.

Another highlight was writing a blog to celebrate the department’s 130th anniversary. It was a full-circle moment, as I drew on the skills I built in first year as an LSE blog writer, but this time, I got to spotlight the work of some of the incredible women in the department. As someone deeply passionate about feminism and representation, it meant a lot to contribute in that way.

Altogether, these experiences helped me realise that while I love academic research, I’m especially driven by the idea of applying it to real-world policy, where I can see the impact of the work I do. I’m really excited to say I’ve now secured a graduate job in that space.

If you could hop on a plane tomorrow, where would you go and why?

Ooh, great question! I’d have to say Tokyo, Japan. I would love to find myself in the city’s neon-lit streets and buzzing markets. Just imagining myself weaving through the chaos of Shibuya or stumbling upon a tucked-away ramen shop fills me excitement.

On the other end of the spectrum, if I were craving nature and stillness, I’d love to revisit Kashmir, the region between Pakistan and India, where my family is from on my mum’s side. The beauty there is breathtaking, and I would love to visit the Neelum Valley, or Gulmarg, famed for their shimmering lakes, lush meadows, and towering snow-capped peaks. Beyond its scenery, Kashmir also carries deep personal and emotional meaning for me. I’m actually currently writing a novel set in Kashmir (the region has also experienced decades of conflict) so its beauty, culture and the strength of its people are also a huge source of inspiration for me.

What inspired you to pursue a PhD?

I first learned what a PhD was from my history high school teacher who did a PhD part-time. This teacher was a major inspiration for me generally, and I remember clearly how he took us students to Sweden’s largest archive and taught us how to read old newspapers on microfilm.

Even if I didn’t see myself doing a PhD at that time, he showed how many questions were left unanswered about the past and present of society, and that if you committed yourself to searching for potential answers, you would learn so much in the process. If you were one-in-a-million, you would find an answer to the question you posed, but most likely you would learn how that original question was the wrong one to pose in the first place.

As my first exposure to first-hand research, he helped me see just how much I enjoy asking questions, have them reformed by encounters with others, and eventually form their potential answers together.

Fast forward 8 years, I spent a year doing exchange studies in Ethnic Studies at the University of California at Berkeley. This year turned into one of my most formative before the PhD, as scholars and students as well as activists, thinkers and creators beyond academia exposed me to the potential of using research as a platform for participating in social change.

Both these experiences helped me recognize my love for formulating questions, seek their response with others, and how academia could function as one platform to make those questions and their answers matter.

You’ve been involved in organising several departmental events and reading circles. Can you tell us a bit about these?

I think reading circles are such a great and fun way to learn together! The first reading circle I organised focused on feminist methodology. Coming into the PhD, I was interested in the topic, and since it wasn’t really offered as a course in the department, I sent out an email to other PhD students asking if others were interested too and wanted to run a reading circle together.

This resulted in a reading circle that ran for a year, and then grew (due to the efforts of other PhDs and faculty) into a larger departmental initiative which brough together undergraduate, postgraduate and some faculty members around questions of intersectional feminist geographies. While I wasn’t part of the later iterations of the circle and didn’t end up using feminist methodologies in my PhD research, our first year together definitely trained me in how to organise and participate in collective learning, insights I took with me when I later participated in the Legal Geography Research Group at Simon Fraser University. Also, we had a lot of fun!

Learning how relatively easy it was to set up a space for collective learning definitely motivated me and provided me with the tools to initiate the writing group I and 4 other PhD candidates now run where we read and discuss each other's writing with the aim of improving it.

In my experience, the writing group has been a supportive space where we can get into the details of writing, thus offering a good complement to the department’s excellent Writing the World series.

How do you like to relax and unwind?

Relaxation is the best! When I want to relax my body, you’ll find me walking slowly along Regent’s Canal, listening to a Swedish podcast. I find it really soothing to listen to radio in my native language, and my favourites include the Swedish National Public Radio’s series “Stil” and “P3 ID”.

When I want to relax my head, you’ll find me in one of London’s many dance studios – desperately trying to keep up with a routine - but always having a lot of fun! When the music plays, and I try to put my body in specific spaces and forms there really isn’t time for abstract thinking. To be so in the moment can be so liberating and indeed offer a relaxing mental pause from academic life!

Sive, you’re spending the 2024-25 academic year studying in North America. Can you tell us about how you found out about the opportunity and why you applied?

I first considered the idea of studying abroad as part of my degree when researching universities back in my penultimate year of high school. Although I had no idea where or how I’d make this work, I knew that studying abroad as an undergraduate was one of the ways to make living in a different part of the world an affordable possibility. Especially as a Geography student, I felt it was important to explore the world outside my own bubble and make the most of any opportunities that came my way.

Ironically, given where I am now, I didn’t submit an application to study abroad at New York University. In fact, NYU wasn’t even an option when I first applied! I submitted my initial written application to GO LSE to study abroad in Canada after a significant amount of late-night brainstorming in the library and many walks around campus for inspiration (… procrastination). Following a group interview, lots of shortlisting, and the ongoing support of my academic mentor Austin Zeiderman, I was offered a place to study abroad towards the end of January!

In mid-February, I was informed that a blip with international student visas in Canada meant that studying there was no longer an option for the 2024-25 academic year. However, the fantastic GO LSE team reached out to other contacts and within a few weeks, they had established a new exchange partnership with NYU. After carefully considering my options and searching for additional funding opportunities, I accepted my place to study at NYU!

What do you hope to achieve in your year abroad?

As a Political Science major at NYU, I’m eager to develop my interests and knowledge outside of geography. I’m taking modules that span across a range of different disciplines, and so hopefully I’ll return to my final year at LSE with a fresh, interdisplinary perspective.

Of course, I haven’t abandoned geography completely! I’m on a mission to convince my American friends that it’s much more than just colouring in maps and naming capitals. I’m also especially excited about a class I’m taking on the history of U.S. environmental policy and indigenous land management, and I hope to be able to continue learning about indigenous history, cultures, and law next semester in New York.

I’m also aiming to travel and discover as much of the U.S. as possible. Currently, I’ve visited 4 out of 50 states (including from the incredible BA Geography field trip to Portland in March), so I’ve got a way to go! Some of my friends and I are planning a road trip for later this semester, so that will help me tick a couple more states off the list.

We recently celebrated Homecoming at Howard University and went to an NFL game in Maryland, and now with Día de los Muertos and Thanksgiving coming up, there’s lots to look forward to!

What have been the most exciting aspects of living and studying in Washington DC so far? How excited are you about being in New York next semester?

Despite having been in DC for over a month, I still can’t quite believe I’m here! The endless free museums, a thriving arts and culture scene, and the palpable energy – call it excitement, optimism, anxiety, or dread - surrounding the upcoming Presidential Election all make DC an exciting place to be. The city is very walkable and has great connections to other nearby places like Baltimore and Philadelphia. I’m also still freaking out every time I catch sight of the U.S. Capitol or the White House; it’s the perfect city for a political nerd like myself!

In true form, I’ve thrown myself into everything. I’m juggling a job and an internship, have joined the dance team, and am busy planning various adventures and side quests. There’s also much to learn, from getting used to the three-hour (!) classes, to figuring out Fahrenheit, and learning the rules of American football… all with mixed success.

As for New York next semester, I’m gearing up with a solid preparation plan – mainly binge-watching Gossip Girl to soak in the Manhattan vibes and creating a ludicrously long bucket list.

Of course, I greatly miss my friends and fellow geographers back at LSE but knowing that I’ve got an extra year until I need to write my dissertation makes that less of a hardship! From my experiences so far, I’d strongly encourage other LSE Geographers to explore the possibility of studying abroad. It’s one of the best ways to expand the scope of your degree and see the world for yourself. If I can help any current second-years with their applications, please do reach out!

Leon, how did you discover the opportunity to study abroad and what motivated you to apply?

I had the idea of a year abroad lingering at the back of my mind since starting LSE in September 2022. At that point, I had close to zero clue about the where and how and it was more of a distant possibility. It wasn’t until seeing a reminder on a CKK billboard about a week before the first deadline in Autumn 2023 that I went home and began to get crafty with a personal statement for submission (for which there is a rather corny application send-off video somewhere far back in my camera roll). With the assistance of the patient and attentive GO LSE team and a fair amount of shortlisting later, I found out about my place in mid-January.

Having gone through the trials and tribulations of learning Mandarin Chinese as my outside option for the second year running, I decided to spend some time in a place where I could not only be using it to pass a tedious four-hour exam every spring. Mandarin has been an amazing language to get a handle on, with each step of learning feeling incredibly rewarding.

However, keeping language learning inside the confines of a classroom is no way to achieve any form of proficiency. LSE had just entered a new exchange partnership with the University of Hong Kong, and whilst the city is generally Cantonese speaking, the university offers a rich catalogue of Mandarin language / China-related social science modules. Other than being a bustling metropolis, the chance to trade another British winter for a year in East Asia was incredibly tempting – so that speaks for itself (unless you’re into Lemsip and layering…).

What do you hope to achieve in your year abroad?

What Hong Kong shares with London other than an abundance of rainfall is acting as a focal point for the financial services industry. I hate to share the ‘voice of the finance bro’ that is synonymous with LSE’s career hubbub, but I think immersion within this kind of environment provides a valuable opportunity to think seriously about how I want to begin shaping my career when the time comes.

You can take a long hike accompanied by sweeping views of the South China Sea and later prance around night markets and nauseatingly high rooftop bars just some miles away, so I’m also looking forward to determining whether the city might reign supreme to London’s work hard/ play hard ethos.

I also really hope to make the most out of being exposed to a mix of new personalities and perspectives. I’ve been lucky enough to have already been introduced to incoming internationals, from other Londoners to Ethiopians to Californians, who will be touching down later this month as part of my exchange cohort.

Naturally, I’m also keen to begin mapping out my global couch-surfing network which is a lasting benefit of any exchange student experience! Whilst I’m positive it will be incredibly difficult to become bored, it would be a missed opportunity to stay put in the city and neglect the rest of SE Asia. I’m itching to visit Korea, Japan, and beyond, and am carefully calculating for ample stamp space at the back of my passport.

How excited are you about spending the year in Hong Kong?

I would say excitement is an understatement, but I also understand most soon-to-be exchange students, including myself, have started feeling a bittersweet combination of emotions. My LSE friends are persistently reminding me of just how much I will miss them - and also of their extensive souvenir expectations. Of course, facetiming family also isn’t quite the same as coming home for a weekend of nutritious food and fresh washing.

Having said that, I’ve been back in the UK only very briefly having just returned from Hong Kong after a three-week fellowship that took place between July and August. The city has an outstanding food scene that warrants an eager appetite and that puts London’s extortionate food offerings to shame! I also took the opportunity to investigate its art and culture scene - which begins to articulate not so much a turbulent historical context as much as the distinctive resilience and reinvention that defines the character of the modern city.

Anyhow, I absolutely can’t wait to get back and was seriously contemplating staying out there! Regardless of the incoming uncertainties that are inherent to moving to a different hemisphere at 20, I’m genuinely looking forward to picking up the next chunk of my degree, and very strongly encourage other BA Geographers to take a leap of faith and go overseas. After all, we take possibly the most explorative degree at LSE and the department works hard to give us a front-row seat to the global stage – so go see it for yourself!

Romano, can you tell us a bit about your PhD and research?

My PhD in Environmental Economics focuses on climate econometrics, a branch of climate economics which aims at estimating the economic damages of increasing temperatures using statistical and econometric methods. Specifically, I use firm-level economic data to assess whether such damages are heterogeneous across firms with different characteristics.

What do you enjoy most about teaching in the department?

Given the relevance of climate change and the environmental crisis in general, all the students in the department studying these topics are extremely motivated and eager to learn. This has positive impacts on both the learning and teaching experience. Additionally, students generally come from different academic backgrounds, favouring interdisciplinary class discussions and knowledge sharing.

Favourite spot on campus?

My favourite spot on campus is the Shaw Library in the Old Building. It’s possibly the only place on campus where you can still feel the early 20th century vibes. It is thrilling to be there and realise that people who have made history at LSE and beyond spent time in that room. Moreover, the Shaw Library hosts lunchtime concerts on Thursdays during term-time, with performances from incredibly talented musicians.