Making Africa Urban

Professor Jennifer Robinson is one of eight senior researchers from UCL who have been awarded a European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant to explore ambitious research ideas related to global challenges

Her project, 'Making Africa Urban: The transcalar politics of large-scale urban development' will investigate how the future of African cities reflects transnational processes based on sovereign, developmental and private investment in large-scale urban developments. Three cities will be studied, Accra (Ghana), Dar es Salaam (Tanzania) and Lilongwe (Malawi). The transnational framework will allow a new perspective on urban governance challenges, focus on projects, and will seek to treat African experiences as the basis for wider insights into global urban politics.

The project will build African-based research capacity in urban studies, with African collaborators and early career researchers in the team. With Professor Robinson, this will be led, by Professor Phil Harrison (University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg), Professor George Owusu (University of Ghana, Legon, Accra) and Dr Evance Mwathunga (Chancellor College, University of Malawi), together with post-doc and PhD researchers in each city.

In response to all the awards made to UCL, Professor David Price, UCL’s Vice-Provost for Research, comments:

““ERC Advanced Grants are awarded for excellence in research and we are extremely proud to have eight of our academics as recipients. These grants will allow our academics to break boundaries and pursue innovative projects for which the university is world-renowned.”

See

• European Research Council