Moving through entropic times | Tatiana Thieme
The event "Moving through entropic times: rubbles, refusal and regeneration" is funded by the European Research Council Inhabiting Radical Housing project and supported by Interuniversity Department of Regional and Urban Studies and Planning-DIST of Politecnico di Torino, DINAMIA’CET-ISCTE of Lisbon University Institute, the ICS of University of Lisbon and the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT).
Abstract
It feels impossible not to be consumed with melancholia, outrage and disappointment in the face of overlapping injustices, violence, and frightening political and ecological collapse everywhere one looks. How then do we hold onto a modicum of hope as we navigate the classroom, our field-sites, and reflect on the meaning of what we do? This talk builds on a piece written during the Covid-19 pandemic, “Beyond Repair: Staying with Break-down at the interstices”. Here, I reflect on what it means to move through the break-down, to think about the generative moves that work with entropic times of disorder and uncertainty. I ground the discussion by reflecting on recent events in Nairobi, Kenya, that echo wider politics of climate injustice and urban removal, political uprising, and quiet ecological encroachments. This rebel city brings together outrage, joyful militancy, and a hustle urbanism that is underpinned by a politics of hope and collective struggle amidst the breakdown; a politics that we could think with as we try to grapple with entropic times and troubles elsewhere.
Speaker: Tatiana Thieme (University College London)
Biography
Tatiana Thieme is an urban ethnographer and Associate Professor based at University College London in the Department of Geography. Tatiana draws together her training in dance, anthropology, and geography (from Cornell University, LSE, and University of Cambridge) to study the social, economic, ecological and cultural lives of young people navigating precarious urban environments. Tatiana’s primary field-site is Nairobi, Kenya, where she has been conducting on-going research in popular neighbourhoods since 2009. Her secondary field-sites are Paris and Berlin where she has worked on grassroots migrant solidarities since 2017, and London where she has studied the porosity of carceral spaces. She has published in various journals and has a forthcoming monograph (Spring 2025), titled Hustle Urbanism: Making Life Work in Nairobi, with University of Minnesota Press.
The event will take place in person at the Salone d'Onore of the Castello del Valentino and online via the Zoom platform.
- Reserve your spot to attend the event in person: click here.
- To attend remotely, registration is required at this link.
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