This project aims to establish a community of ‘elsewheres’ researchers across the GW4 alliance (Exeter, Bristol, Bath and Cardiff) who are passionate about using their expertise to advance a globally relevant urban scholarship and develop ambitious new theorisations of the urban.
Amid a global urban transition that extends well beyond the developed North, UK Higher Education Institutions have recruited academics from diverse ‘elsewheres’, often in countries situated in what has been termed sites of the Global Majority, keen to ensure leadership at the forefront of urban knowledge creation and theory development.
Despite these intentions, UK-based academics with expertise and experience in such ‘elsewheres’ often find their ability to contribute to theory-building, research projects and grant funding, limited.
Objectives
The objectives of the community include uncovering the experiences of living in a country situated in the Global North while researching elsewhere and collectively addressing the difficulties of pursuing such work within UK academia.
The project has three core objectives:
- To connect and network ‘elsewheres’ urban researchers who are often isolated within their departments or institutions, establishing a cross-institutional research group with a clear identity and creating a strong foundation for mutual support, collaborations and joint funding applications.
- To identify the challenges that these scholars face in leveraging, developing, and applying their global expertise within UK academia, due to their liminal positionality, thereby laying the groundwork for a strong business case for institutional support.
- To explore collaborative initiatives that could be developed to address these barriers.
Proposed outputs
- A series of online sessions among project leads to develop grant proposals and business case
- A central online hub to showcase member profiles and shared resources.
- A network of engaged researchers offering mutual support and engagement
- Position papers and commentaries
Co-Investigators
| Name | Role | Instituation |
|---|---|---|
| Ana Cecilia Dinerstein | Community lead | University of Bath |
| Qiujie Shi | Principal Investigator | University of Bristol |
| Alicia Hayashi Lazzarini | Community lead | University of Exeter |
Upcoming events
Through a set of online and in person events this project will strengthen and augment existing expertise to build a robust regional coalition of ‘elsewheres’ urban scholars in the UK’s Southwest.
| Date | Details |
|---|---|
| 27-28 May 2026 | A two-day community-generating meeting in Bristol for urban scholars across the GW4 who are originally from, and/or conduct research about, ‘elsewheres’. This will be the first initiative to bring together a critical mass of such scholars across institutions, pooling dispersed voices to reflect on the challenges of working at distance and explore opportunities for collective action. |
| 1-4 September 2026 | World Cafe Discussion “At a Distance: Urban scholarship in the Global Majority” community at Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) Annual International Conference 2026, London. |
Contact
For more details, please contact:
- Margot Rubin RubinM@Cardiff.ac.uk
- Qiujie Shi qiujie.shi@bristol.ac.uk
Schools
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