Keynote speakers

Ilse van Liempt is Associate Professor in Urban Geography in the Human Geography Department, Research Leader of the UU wide Focus Area Migration and Societal Change and Coordinator of the Research Master Urban and Economic Geography. Previously, Van Liempt worked at the Institute for Ethnic and Migration Studies (IMES) in Amsterdam and at the Sussex Center for Migration Research (SCMR). Her PhD was published in 2007 as a book called Navigating Borders (Amsterdam University Press). Since then she has published widely on irregular migration, refugee migration, gender, public space, diversity and processes of inclusion and exclusion in renowned journals. She has two edited volumes coming up in 2023: A Research Handbook on Irregular Migration https://www.e-elgar.com/shop/gbp/research-handbook-on-irregular-migration-9781800377493.html and an edited volume Refugee Youth: Migration, Justice and Urban Space https://bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/refugee-youth

Sara Fregonese is a political geographer with a background in Middle Eastern Studies. Her research is about the relations between geopolitics, security and urban space, and how geopolitical situations and events impact on the everyday life of cities, their built environment and residents. The main empirical focus of Dr Fregonese research is Lebanon, where she has twenty years of research and fieldwork experience. However, she have also conducted fieldwork in several other European locations, using a variety of qualitative research methods. She is the author of  War and The City. Urban Geopolitics in Lebanon (Bloomsbury 2019) and of The Radicals’ City. Urban environment, polarisation, cohesion (Routledge 2016, with Ralf Brand). She is currently the Principal Investigator of the ESRC/ANR/DFG-funded research project Atmospheres of (counter-)terrorism in European cities (2021-2023), a mixed-methods study which explores the felt dimensions of contemporary terror threats and counterterrorism measures in the ordinary experience of cities in Europe.

Päivi Kymäläinen is Associate Professor (tenure track) at the Unit of Social Research at Tampere University, and a Board Member of the profiling area of Sustainable Transformation of Urban Environments (STUE). She holds degrees in human geography from the University of Oulu and University of Helsinki, and has a Title of Docent in Urban Geography from the University of Turku. She has previously worked in several university positions in Finland, and has held visiting positions at University of Pennsylvania, Simon Fraser University, Roskilde University, Uppsala University and NTNU. She also visited Syracuse University as a Fulbright Senior Scholar. Her research interests include urban inequalities and justice, everyday urban life, the social construction of public spaces, (sub)urban development, alternative communities, and citizen participation. She has been the Principal Investigator in several research projects having a critical and transdisciplinary approach to urban social and spatial lives, and is the leader of the Research Network for Justice, Space and Society (JUSTSPACES).

Natalie Oswin is associate professor in the Department of Human Geography at the University of Toronto Scarborough. Her work explores postcolonial queer geographies in the context of globalization and urbanization. She is author of Global City Futures: Desire and Development in Singapore (University of Georgia Press, 2019) and managing editor of the interdisciplinary journal Environment and Planning D: Society and Space and the Society and Space Magazine.