To London, to London

Oh man, this one has been a close hold for so long it’s a relief to just have it out there.

I am deeeeelighted to share with you the news that I’ve been selected to receive the inaugural Mellon Fellowship at LSE Cities, and that Nurri and I and the excellent cat will be spending much of the next year in London.

My research project is called “Urban intelligences, subjects and subjectivities,” and unsurprisingly it’s about developing alternative conceptions of networked information technology in the contemporary city. Specifically, I’m interested in asking how we might…

– leverage the potential of data-gathering, analysis and visualization tools to improve a community’s sense of the challenges, risks and opportunities facing it, and support it in the aim of autonomous self-governance;

– use networked technologies to further the prerogatives so notably absent from the smart-city paradigm, particularly those having to do with solidarity, mutuality and collective action;

– inscribe a robust conception of the right to the city in all of the technological interventions proposed, including but not limited to those intended to enhance personal mobility, citizen engagement, and processes of (individual and collective) self-determination;

– and devise everyday technologies to support the open, tolerant, feisty, opinionated character we associate with big-city life, above all that quality variously described as canniness, nous or savoir faire.

It’s going to be great. I am so very pleased and honored to be doing this, and I cannot tell you how much I look forward to spending more time with all the beloved on the other side of the Black Atlantic. I want to thank everyone at the Mellon Foundation and the LSE who have helped make this a reality, and, my word, Nurri for thinking this was an interesting way to spend her 2014…but above all dear Adriana Young, without whose active instigation and encouragement this never, ever would have come to pass.