Ash Amin: "On subjectivity and place"

Ash Amin, Professor of Geography at the University of Cambridge, and the 2021 Swedish Research Council’s Olof Palme Guest Professor: "On subjectivity and place"

This meeting will focus on how urban subjectivities are made and unmade in the dwelling of places. We either tend to take personhood as given or as affected by the environment in which we live, as though the latter was outside to the self. Based on my work on mental states in poor neighbourhoods in Shanghai and in the slums and homeless spaces of Delhi, I wish to argue that place - in its design, atmosphere, habitat, sensorial qualities, built form - enters into the making of subjectivity through practices of dwelling. It is on the inside of bodily and mental states, with far reaching implications for how we conceptualise urban identities as well as the management of space for human well being.

All PhD students are welcome to attend. Register to the seminar before May 7 by sending an e-mail with a short note about your thesis project to: anders.ekstrom@idehist.uu.se.

Readings will be circulated in mid-May.