Achievements of the project so far:
1) Continue to build new ‘southern theories’ of digitalisation-as-urbanisation including several conceptual innovations.
- Territorialising the everyday digitalising state: We have published one agenda setting paper on the 'digitalising state' (Datta 2022) and one on the temporality of the state (Datta and Hoefsloot, forthcoming 2024) in high impact peer-reviewed international Journals and further have recently also received a contract (Datta and Reyes) from Manchester University Press for a book titled 'Control, Shift, Govern: Technologies of state power in the digital era'.
- Governing information infrastructures: We are conceptualising the governance of information across the materialities of paper and digital formats. To this end we have published one agenda setting paper (Datta and Muthama 2024) and have submitted a book manuscript under contract with UCL Press titled 'Informational Peripheries: Rethinking the urban in a digital age'. Two other journal papers are under review (Reyes and Muthama; Hoefsloot et al.) with high impact international journals.
- Governing territorial politics in the ‘digital turn’: A major contribution of this project so far is in understanding how the state governs territorial politics in an era of municipal digitalisation. By focussing on the 'digital turn' in global, national and local urbanisation initiatives we are re-examining the terrain of territorial politics through the transformation of state spaces and the governance of information infrastructures. To this end we have three book chapters forthcoming (Datta and Muthama; Datta and Demerutis; Gupta and Datta) in edited volumes.
2) To produce empirically original evidence of digitalisation-as-urbanisation through South-South comparisons of metropolitan peripheries of Mumbai, Nairobi and Guadalajara. So far, the team has conducted over 300 interviews and 50 ethnographic observations across three cases with a wide range of state and non-state actors, and community members. The team has authored 3 reports (one from each case study) published on the project website.
3) To develop innovative methodologies that combine interdisciplinary approaches from geography, anthropology and regional studies in investigating digitalisation-as-urbanisation. We are developing a series of novel methodologies including organograms, information audit trails and annotated databases.
4) To disseminate findings that are empirically rich and theoretically produced from the global south across multiple academic and lay audiences. In 4-5 Sep 2023, we organised an International symposium titled 'The Digitalising State' in London that was attended by 30 participants including international team members. The team has also organised a series of sessions in international academic conferences (RGS and AAG) in 2023 and 2024 where international team members presented findings from the project. We have also held 4 local policy and stakeholder workshops - 2 in Nairobi, and one each in Mumbai and Guadalajara, that are enabling more democratic and sustainable pathways to land digitalisation. Reports link:
https://www.regionalfutures.org/en/outputs(si apre in una nuova finestra)The PI has delivered 8 keynotes in international academic and policy audiences including a keynote in June 2024 in the UN-Habitat conference in Hamburg.
A total of 13 Blogs have been written by team members and published on the project website. (available here:
https://www.regionalfutures.org/all-blog(si apre in una nuova finestra))
5) Build capacity among research institutions and early career researchers (ECR) in the team spread across the UK, India, Mexico and Kenya. This includes following activities:
- fortnightly local team meetings to check on progress and provide constructive feedback,
- monthly brainstorming sessions to reflect upon findings and discuss conceptual innovations,
- a fortnightly reading group led by postdocs and attended by all 12 team members,
- regular full team training sessions on ethics, risk assessment, data management, conducting interviews and field observations and so on,
- ECRs have presented findings in conferences and workshops in Ireland, Germany and South Africa.
This continuous training has led to successes as the two UK based post-docs have both recently received seed funding from UCL to conduct focus group workshops with stakeholders and communities in Mexico and Kenya. This funding supplements our ongoing work with communities in the metropolitan peripheries.
