Image: Soheb Zaidi (2020)
Taking up the theme of ‘Nocturnal Cities’, the 2026-2027 ASCA Cities seminar will explore the city after dark. Imaginaries of nocturnal cities unfold across different media, ranging from Gothic themes in literature and film to visions … Read more...
How does sound shape the production of space? What power does noise hold in politically contested environments? On Friday, 24 April 2026, Alfredo Thiermann (Swiss Federal Technology Institute of Lausanne) will join us for a NICA Masterclass on “Sound … Read more...
Image: Rural Explorer (2019)
On Friday 22 May 2026, Sandra Jasper (Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg) and Jonathan Prior (Cardiff University) will join the 2025-2026 ASCA Cities Seminar for a talk titled “Urban Bioacoustics: Listening to Animal Voices in the GDR”… Read more...
On Friday 24 April, Alfredo Thiermann will joins us for the 2025-2026 ASCA Cities Seminar to present his research in a talk titled “Radio-Activities: Architecture and Broadcasting in Cold War Berlin”. In his research, Alfredo Thiermann Riesco … Read more...
Image: Ula Kuzma (2019)
On Friday 2o March, we are welcoming the next guest speakers to the 2025-2026 ASCA Cities Seminar: Naomi Bueno de Mesquita, Tzlil Sharon and Amit Gur (Amsterdam University of the Arts), part of the research … Read more...
On Friday, 22 May 2026, Sandra Jasper (Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg) will join us for a NICA Masterclass on “Wastelands and Urban Ecologies”.
Urban wastelands are spaces of scientific discovery and collective memory. Ruins, deindustrialized zones, former railway yards … Read more...
Image: Abigail Lynn (2015)
On Friday 13 February, we will have our first guest speaker for the 2025-2026 ASCA Cities Seminar: Sébastien Darchen (University of Queensland) will present his research on the intersection between urban planning and … Read more...
Image: Zac Gudakov (2020)
The 2025–2026 ASCA Cities seminar will take up the theme of ‘Sound Cities’ to explore how sound not only resonates in the urban environments, but also how sound shapes our conceptualizations of and experiences … Read more...
Image: Jon Tyson (2020)
Some cities are famous for their sound, from New Orleans’ jazz music and Manchester’s pop through to Amsterdam’s club culture. Even beyond these examples, sound plays a central role in the city – and yet often … Read more...
Image: Florian Wehde (2018)
In this session of the 2024–2025 ASCA Cities seminar on ‘Playable Cities’, Paul O’Connor (University of Exeter) will give a guest lecture on “Play through the Grey Prism: Addressing Chromatic Leisure in Cities“ followed … Read more...
Image: Robin Glauser (2019)
In this session of the 2024–2025 ASCA Cities seminar on ‘Playable Cities’, Christoph Borbach and Max Kanderske (University of Siegen) will give a guest lecture on “Playful Resistance: Sensor-Counter Practices in Urban Environments“ followed by … Read more...
On Friday, April 25, Paul O’Connor (University of Exeter) will join us for a NICA Masterclass on “Rolling Ethnography: Methodology and Urban Research”.
During this masterclass we will read and discuss recent research focused on interdisciplinary urban methods in … Read more...
Image: Peter Berko (2017)
The 2024–2025 ASCA Cities seminar will approach the city through the lens of play. Taking up the theme of ‘Playable Cities’, we are interested in how play functions both as a concept and method … Read more...
Image: Charlie Deets (2018)
In this session of the 2024–2025 ASCA Cities seminar on ‘Playable Cities’, Ekim Tan will give a guest lecture on “Play the City: Representing Non-Human Agents” followed by an open discussion. The session … Read more...
Image: Mahdis Mousavi (2019)
In this session of the 2024–2025 ASCA Cities seminar on ‘Playable Cities’, Sam Hind (Manchester University) will give a guest lecture on “Playing Domains: Competition in Machine Vision Challenges“ followed by an open discussion. … Read more...
On Friday, March 14, Sam Hind (Manchester University) will join us for a NICA Masterclass on “Eyes on the Prize: Studying Competitions in AI”.
In this masterclass, we will examine the growing phenomenon of machine vision ‘challenges’, used … Read more...
On Friday, May 16, Christoph Borbach and Max Kanderske (Siegen University) will join us for a NICA Masterclass on “Counter-Practices”.
In this masterclass, we will examine historic and contemporary media practices designed to confuse, elude and subvert processes … Read more...
The 23. NECS Graduate Workshop, hosted by the University of Cologne and organised by , will take place from 29-31 October 2024. The workshop’s title, “L/Nightscapes: Perspectives on Illumination and the City”, refers to the mutual conditionality of night and … Read more...
How does popular music shape and reflect cultural identities? The symposium “From Hinterland to Europapa: Identity and Placemaking in Dutch Popular Music Culture”, taking place on 25 October from 14.00-17.00 at Radboud Institute for Culture and History, explores the intricate … Read more...
As part of International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam, Het Nieuwe Instituut is hosting a book launch of The Green Dip – a visual manifesto of an ongoing research project conducted by The Why Factory at TU Delft – on 10 October, … Read more...
On 10 October at 20.00, the Institute of Network Cultures and the Hogeschool van Amsterdam are organizing a book launch of Acid Clouds: Mapping Data Centre Topologies at Spui 25.
Acid Clouds: Mapping Data Centre Topologies explores the hidden infrastructures … Read more...
The Amsterdam Institute for Humanities Research (AIHR) is organizing the research seminar “What is Landscape? Theory, Aesthetic and Politics of Landscapes” – divided over six sessions from October 2024 to Spring 2025.
Led by Noa Roei and Irina Souch, this … Read more...
Is the future still a thing? Which relations open up when thinking about “no future” and hopelessness as an old/new “structure of feeling,” to speak with Raymond Williams? On 14 November, 15.00-17.00 at REC C4.50A, the Department of Human Geography, … Read more...
How might we expand our approach to urban research from a sensory perspective? What about multimodal methods and questions of representation concerning your research? The Department of Human Geography, Planning & International Development is organizing a masterclass lunch with Prof. … Read more...
In parallel to this year’s ASCA Cities Seminar, Carolyn Birdsall, Linda Kopitz and Alex Gekker are co-editing a special issue on “Playable Cities” for Mediapolis – A Journal of Cities and Culture to be published in September 2025. Some … Read more...
Image: Peter Berko (2017)
The 2024–2025 ASCA Cities seminar will approach the city through the lens of play. Taking up the theme of ‘Playable Cities’, we are interested in how play functions both as a concept and method in representing, … Read more...
Special Issue of Mediapolis: A Journal of Cities and Culture edited by Linda Kopitz and Pei-Sze Chow
The foundational manifesto written by Joan Tronto draws an implicit connection between care and place in its emphasis on shifting care from the … Read more...
Alex Gekker in Mobile Media & Communication
The paper explores Google Maps’ COVID-19 layer, a special feature launched by the cartographic platform in September 2020, and shut down two years later. Through the reading of promotional corporate blogposts and interfacial … Read more...
By Ben Moore
Ben Moore presents a new approach to reading urban modernity in nineteenth-century literature, by bringing together hidden, mobile and transparent features of city space as part of a single system he calls ‘invisible architecture’. Resisting narratives of … Read more...
Image: Davide Clode (2023)
In the final session of 2023–2024 ASCA Cities seminar on ‘Material Cities’, Yuriko Furuhata (McGill University) will give a guest lecture on “Self-Portraits of Coral: Visual Archives and Radiation Ecologies in the Anthropocene” followed by an … Read more...
Jelke R. Bosma and Niels van Doorn in Space and Culture
In this article, we argue that it is analytically productive to think about the professionalization of hosting on Airbnb in terms of (commercial) gentrification. More precisely, we believe that … Read more...
Timo Koren in European Journal of Cultural Studies
Understanding regulation is key to identifying and understanding the mechanisms and patterns that (re)produce social inequalities in nightclub production. Roughly speaking, researchers have focused on two forms of regulation: governmental regulation and … Read more...
Linda Kopitz in European Journal of Cultural Studies
This article proposes that virtual renderings of speculative architectural projects provide a crucial entry point into the reimagination of sustainable urban life through the production of nature(s) within the city. Drawing on
Special Issue WARP Walking Practices x Soapbox Journal edited by Alice Twemlow and Tânia A. Cardoso
Walking centres the body in a research practice. The body that gets cold, sweaty, thirsty, or blistered. The body that encompasses feelings, emotions, prejudices, … Read more...
This book develops and demonstrates an interdisciplinary method that reads literary works as a way of thinking about the city. Literary works do not only provide reflections of the city – depictions of the city as an … Read more...
Image: Alex Shuper (2023)
In the fourth session of 2023–2024 ASCA Cities seminar on ‘Material Cities’, Maria Vélez-Serna (University of Sterling) will give a guest lecture on “Infrastructural and tactical cinema practices: A view from Scotland” followed by an open … Read more...
On Friday, April 19, María Vélez-Serna (University of Stirling) will join us for a NICA Masterclass on “Who Needs Cinemas? Screening Films in a Permacrisis”.
Mapping a city’s spaces and practices of communal film viewing is a way … Read more...
Image: Alex Shuper (2023)
In the third session of 2023–2024 ASCA Cities seminar on ‘Material Cities’, Joseph Heathcott (The New School) will give a guest lecture on “Lava and Concrete: Spatial Production in the Pedregal de Santo Domingo” followed by … Read more...
Urban food commons are critical for nourishing the post-growth city. In this talk hosted by the Postgrowth Cities Coalition, Oona Morrow (University of Wageningen) discusses the ways in which food (un)becoming waste can become a site for communing and … Read more...
On Friday, March 15, Joseph Heathcott (The New School) will join us for a NICA Masterclass on “Space, Time, and Infrastructure”. Together let us think infrastructure, not so much about it, but with it. In this masterclass, we approach infrastructure … Read more...
