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I am an urban geographer interested in how marginalised residents shape cities across Africa, Europe, and the Americas.
- More about Dr Cante
I came to geography via an interdisciplinary journey spanning politics, history, urban and media studies. As a result, I weave popular culture, old and new technologies, and geopolitics into my analysis of cities.
One of the central aims of my research and teaching is to amplify knowledge that is generated in and through everyday life on the global urban margins, particularly as it provides glimpses of alternative futures.
To do so, I draw on ethnographic methods, cross-continental juxtapositions, as well as counter-hegemonic strands of thought.
- Teaching
I currently teach across all undergraduate years and on modules for two MSc programmes. In 22-23, this teaching included:
Undergraduate
Year One
- Geography in the Field 1 (GEOG0013): Introduction to ethnographic methods during the Catalonia field class
- Space and Society (GEOG0150): Four-lecture block on race, space and inequalities
Year Two
- Development Geography (GEOG0024): Lectures on urbanisation and technology as development problematics
Year Three
- Postcolonial Geographies of African Development (GEOG0054): Lectures on media and peace/conflict dynamics in Africa
- Global Urbanism (GEOG0064): Convening the module, leading the field class, and offering lectures on Southern urban theories, smart cities, urban in/security, and Black urbanisms
Postgraduate
- Precarious Urban Environments (GEOG0087): Lecture on urban violence and precarity through an intersectional lens
- Cities, Space and Power (GEOG0136): Lecture on urban geopolitics
- Urban Imaginations (GEOG0137): Lecture on Black counternarratives of urban modernity
- Urban Practices (GEOG0140): Helping organise a visiting guest lecture (this year, a field visit with Latin Elephant in south London)
- Publications
To view Dr Cante's publications, please visit UCL Profiles:
- Research Interests
Overall, my research and teaching ask how ordinary residents make cities ‘hold’ despite the fracturing pressures of inequality and political violence. This concern spans three main themes:
- Peace and conflict from the urban margins: my PhD involved ethnographic work in Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire, West Africa's second-largest metropolis and a city marked by a decade of armed conflict (1999-2011). One of the aims of this research has been to challenge elite narratives of conflict and peace, pointing to the power asymmetries that they reproduce. I also delve into how residents in Abidjan’s ‘popular neighbourhoods’ experience various forms of violence, and how they practice fugitive forms of peace that are not usually recognised as such. This research informs teaching on urban violence and in/security across undergraduate and masters’ modules, thinking with students about the drivers and politics of violence as well as abolitionist perspectives on peace and security.
- Technologies of urban life: My PhD examined local radio as an urban infrastructure in Abidjan. I am interested in how media technologies – old and new – configure urban politics and everyday practices. In particular, I look at how these technologies shape contested atmospheres, and how they enable or constrain various forms of ‘hustle’ in precarious urban environments. This research informs teaching on ‘smart’ urban initiatives, focusing on the power relations involved in digitalising urban infrastructures and asking what more emancipatory, environmentally just approaches to technology could look like.
- Cities of the Black Atlantic: prior to working in Abidjan, I researched the urban histories of Black radio in the United States. Inspired by Paul Gilroy’s notion of the Black Atlantic and by Jenny Robinson’s call for urban comparison, I want to bring Abidjan into a shared, postcolonial frame with cities like London, Chicago and Paris, to analyse interconnected experiences of racialised marginalisation and resistance. This concern translates into teaching on racialisation and spatial inequalities, and on Black urbanisms.
- Impact
After my PhD research on local radio and post-conflict reconstruction in Abidjan, ESRC funding allowed me to organise a stakeholder workshop in June 2019 in which I shared findings with radio managers, NGOs, government officials, and representatives from Côte d’Ivoire’s media regulation agency.
The specific aim of the workshop was to promote local radio, which is non-profit and volunteer-led, as a tool for bottom-up political expression. Drawing on ethnographic observations and conversations, I presented evidence that radio could empower new, more peaceful ways of speaking about politics, breaking from years of militarised partisanship. Yet the emergence of new radio publics in Côte d’Ivoire was hindered, at the time of my research, by strict governmental restrictions on ‘political talk’ on the local airwaves.
While these restrictions were theoretically lifted in 2019, feedback from radio practitioners during the stakeholder workshop confirmed that things had yet to change – making clear what remained to be done to tackle pervasive censorship.
- Research Grants, Prizes and Awards
- 2020 and 2023: BIEA and British Academy Knowledge Frontiers grants
- 2018-19: ESRC Postdoctoral Fellow
