1st Edition
Doing Feminist Urban Research Insights from the GenUrb Project
Doing Feminist Urban Research introduces the reader to the newly emerging 21st century global landscape of feminist urban research. It showcases decolonising practices, partnerships and teamwork, new standards such as EDI, geo-ethnographic methodologies, software-enhanced qualitative data analysis, and knowledge mobilisation.
This book delves into both the institutional and lived reality of the practice of feminist urban research via the insights of a transnational research project (GenUrb). Through reflection exercises based on real life examples, it covers research techniques and feminist methodologies, using NVivo, and knowledge mobilization, including utilizing social media, in the time of the Sustainable Development Goals. It guides readers through navigating the politics of decolonizing research, working across differences, and embracing feminist ethics and activism. The book also explores practices such as translation, professional standards of data management and EDI, collaboration with partners, engaging in teamwork, critically examining the 'field' through comparison and feminist geo-ethnographies, and handling crises, including pandemics. Accompanying web resources will assist scholars and students, with additional audio files and documents.
This book’s practical guidance will help those starting to contemplate and engage in qualitative feminist urban research as well as those teaching the practice and politics of research. It will appeal to and practitioners in urban studies, geography, gender and women’s studies, sociology, anthropology, global studies, and development studies.
Chapter 0 Introducing GenUrb, by Araby Smyth, Linda Peake, and Nasya S. Razavi
Part I. The building blocks for decolonising feminist urban research
Chapter 1 Feminist comparative urban research, by Linda Peake, Mel Mikhail, and Elsa Koleth
Chapter 2 Decolonising feminist knowledge production, by Elsa Koleth and Linda Peake
Chapter 3 Feminist engagements with translation, by Wiley Sharp
Chapter 4 Feminist scholar-activism, by Mantha Katsikana
Part II. The context of 21st-century feminist urban research and policy
Chapter 5 Feminist urban research in the time of COVID-19, by Mel Mikhail
Chapter 6 Feminist urban policy and the Sustainable Development Goals, by Nasya S. Razavi and Linda Peake
Part III. Feminist research standards
Chapter 7 Feminist research ethics, by Linda Peake and Wiley Sharp
Chapter 8 Professional standards in feminist research, by Araby Smyth
Chapter 9 Partnerships and teamwork in feminist collaborations, by Araby Smyth
Chapter 10 Data management in feminist research projects, by Mel Mikhail
Part IV. Feminist methodologies and research methods
Chapter 11 Feminist methodologies and methods, by Linda Peake and Mel Mikhail
Chapter 12 Feminist approaches to fieldwork, by Araby Smyth, Elsa Koleth and Linda Peake
Chapter 13 Feminist geo-ethnography, by Araby Smyth and Linda Peake
Chapter 14 Feminist interviews, by Araby Smyth, Linda Peake, and Elsa Koleth
Part V. Feminist data analysis
Chapter 15 Feminist practices of translation and interpreting, by Carmen Ponce
Chapter 16 Feminist approaches to qualitative data analysis, by Linda Peake and Elsa Koleth
Chapter 17 Software-aided analysis for feminist research, by Biftu Yousuf
Chapter 18 Using NVivo in feminist research, by Biftu Yousef
Part VI. Feminist approaches to knowledge mobilisation
Chapter 19 Knowledge mobilisation in a feminist project, by Araby Smyth, Linda Peake, and Jenna Blower
Chapter 20 Feminist engagement with social media, by Mantha Katsikana
Biography
Linda Peake FRSC is a professor in the Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change at York University, Toronto, Canada where she was also Director of the City Institute (2013-2023). She is PI on the SSHRC Partnership Grant, Urbanisation, gender and the global south: a transformative knowledge network (GenUrb), a Trustee of the Urban Studies Foundation, and an Associate Editor on the AAG International Encyclopedia of Geography. Her latest publications include the books Urbanisation in a Global Context. 2nd edition (edited with Alison Bain, 2022) and A Feminist Urban Theory for our Time: Rethinking Social Reproduction and the Urban (edited with Elsa Koleth, Gokboru Tanyildiz, Raj Narayanareddy, and darren patrick, 2021), and the forthcoming Elgar Handbook on Gender and Cities (edited with Grace Adeniyi Ogunyankin and Anindita Datta).
Nasya Razavi is a Postdoctoral Fellow with GenUrb (2019-2024) and is lead researcher on the Cochabamba City Research Team (CRT). She is currently the Latin America Program Manager at Inter Pares, a feminist social justice organization based in Ottawa. Nasya completed her PhD at the Department of Geography and Planning at Queen’s University, Kingston, Canada, in 2019, which she has published with Routledge as Water Governance in Bolivia: Cochabamba since the Water War. Nasya adopts a feminist decolonial approach to her work in international development, gender, and environmental and social justice.
Araby Smyth is a Postdoctoral Fellow with GenUrb (2021-2024), researching place ecologies of finance and debt. She completed her PhD in the Department of Geography at the University of Kentucky. Her research has been funded by the Antipode Foundation, National Science Foundation (USA), and Society of Woman Geographers. She has published in geography journals such as Antipode, Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, and Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers. She is an editor on the Editorial Collective of the journal ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies.
