Data walks and similar happenings have been proliferating in the years since the publication of Ingrid Burrington’s pioneering volume (“Networks of New York: An illustrated field guide to urban internet infrastructure”) in 2016. Now, the Open Cities Platform, critical infrastructure lab, and [urban interfaces], and the Special Interest Group “Inclusion in the Datafied City”, together bring…

The Open Cities Platform, with input from the UU Descartes Centre for the history and philosophy of the sciences and humanities, is hosting an Open Dialogue around questions of science and the city. Quite a lot of science takes place in cities. But what does “take place” mean here? And what is the specific role…

Screenshot from Makhanda Ngoku! (copyright Makhanda Black Kollective) The online interdisciplinary journal Mediapolis is looking for contributions to a dossier on Media and ‘Middling’ Cities. Mediapolis: A Journal of Cities and Culture is an interdisciplinary online journal that publishes scholarship from a range of academic fields addressing the complex and mutually constitutive relationship between media…

Across the world, democratic institutions are under pressure. Autocratic leaders are on the rise, civic liberties are eroded and the judiciary and the media are curtailed. According to Freedom House the struggle for democracy may be approaching a turning point. The gap between the number of countries that registered overall improvements in political rights and…

Prof. dr. Bruce Mutsvairo. Photo: Ed van Rijswijk Bruce Mutsvairo is a member of [urban interfaces] and a Professor of Media, Politics and the Global South at Utrecht University’s Department of Media and Culture Studies since 1 September 2022. On Tuesday 30 January, he will hold his inaugural lecture titled ‘Platformized Journalism in Authoritarian Contexts’….