Estelle Broyer

Estelle joined LSE Cities in November 2025 to explore the enablers and barriers to innovation in urban governance. Her work will contribute to the development of novel ethnographic and participatory research in partnership with the councils of several European cities.

Broadly speaking, Estelle is interested in local democracy in urban contexts and in the relationships that local state institutions forge with various publics in their attempt to address urgent but complex public problems.

Estelle conducted her PhD in the School of Geography at Queen Mary, University of London. Her research spanned urban geography and political philosophy to explore the politics and publicness of London's Low Traffic Neighbourhoods—a local transport measure deployed in several UK cities as a national response to the COVID-19 pandemic, with long-term goals for climate resilience and active travel. She used a mix of qualitative research methods and a pragmatist, feminist, and intersectional approach to inquiry. Taking seriously both the urgency of reducing car traffic in cities and the democratic need to foreground claims of injustice arising from rapid urban transformation, her thesis offers a critical and relational account of how urban futures are assembled and contested.

Estelle holds an MSc in Electronics Engineering from the Lyon School of Chemistry, Physics and Electronics and an MA in Geography from the University of Washington.

Key Expertise

Urban Political Geography

Expertise Details

Urban political geography, urban governance, local democracy, publicness, emergency politics, philosophical pragmatism, pragmatist inquiry, feminist epistemologies, intersectionality