Urban Theory by and for Whom? Engaged Research, Authorship and Transformation Beyond the Academy

Abstract

This paper engages with Loretta Lees‘ suggestion that this journal include research collaborators beyond the academy as commentators in its urban dialogues. In it, I highlight the contortions and contradictions involved in extracting individual scholarly outputs from collaborative research, drawing on my experiences as a doctoral researcher in the UK. These challenges are intimately entangled with key questions posed by Loretta about who counts as an urban scholar or theorist, and what urban theor(ies) are – or might be – for. The difficulties involved in publishing engaged and collaborative research in academic formats contribute to its marginalision within critical urban studies, robbing the discipline of the particular understandings and possibilities it can open up. Making space for engaged dialogue beyond the academy within this journal can help to open up the production and circulation of urban knowledge to a greater diversity of perspectives and interests, creating a more hospitable environment for engaged, collaborative and activist research within the academy. Such a shift invites authors to bring their multiple subjectivities and identities into urban dialogues – as modelled by Loretta – challenging conventions designed to separate and elevate academic knowledge from the diverse others it depends upon. Extending urban dialogue to non-academic collaborators can therefore help to connect critical urban research with the communities and interests in whose name it claims to operate.