I hold a master's degree in International Relations and Political Science from the Geneva Graduate Institute. My dissertation, titled “Sousveilling the Smart City,” relied on visual ethnographic methods to co-create, together with an LGBTQ+ activist network, a “counter archive” of everyday resistance practices queer individuals in Singapore employ to navigate ubiquitous forms of urban surveillance in the small island state. The research was funded by the Geneva Asia Society and was awarded the Arditi Prize 2024 for the best master's thesis in International Relations.

 

What I work on

My PhD project, “Securing Urban Peace,” investigates how smart city infrastructures impact peace in post-conflict societies. In our ever-urbanizing world, high levels of insecurity and violence in cities across the globe constitute some of the most significant hurdles to achieving lasting peace - especially in contexts grappling with legacies of armed conflict. In parallel, many post-conflict societies are now digitally upgrading their urban infrastructures. However, little is known about how these smart city initiatives impact the transformation of post-conflict violence and the building of peace.

Against this background, my research project seeks to compare the design, implementation, and use of smart city infrastructures in three post-conflict contexts: Northern Ireland (NI), South Africa (SA), and Sri Lanka (SL). It suggests thinking of these initiatives as socio-technical systems that are inherently diverse and traces how they are shaped by different actors, from city governments over technology start-ups to civil society organizations (CSOs).

To do so, I rely on a multi-sited ethnography of smart city projects in Belfast (NI), Durban (SA), and Colombo (SL), staying up to three months in each city. In each context, the research is implemented in close coordination with the following partner institutions: Queen’s University Belfast (Communities and Place), University of Cape Town (School of Architecture Planning and Geomatics), and University of Moratuwa (Department of Architecture). This is made possible through by the Swiss National Science Foundation.

In particular, the project will

→ Compare smart city designs across Northern Ireland, South Africa, and Sri Lanka

→ Engage with relevant stakeholders in each city to understand smart city implementation challenges

→ Work with CSOs and affected communities to understand how the use of smart city devices impacts everyday life

By doing so, the project will contribute to the systematic exploration of smart city projects in post-conflict contexts through new conceptual perspectives and empirical insights. By producing critical reflections on the effects of smart cities on social cohesion, the project will be relevant to different stakeholders working on urban safety, peacebuilding, and smart technologies. Project outputs will be shared with partner organizations and disseminated through academic publications, policy briefs, and public-facing exhibitions.

 

Why I am at QCAP

QCAP is the perfect place for me to conduct my research and ensure that this is done in a way that does not replicate but adds to current initiatives. Substantively, QCAP’s “Smart City-zens” project first caught my attention when I conducted the first mapping of academic work and community action on urban smartness in Belfast. While not framed in terms of “peace,” the project’s ambition to ensure that urban innovation is not done to local communities but with them deeply resonated with me. In peace research, such community empowerment would be considered as amounting to “positive peace,” which goes beyond the mere absence of violence (negative peace) and also encompasses social justice and the absence of structural violence.

In addition to substantive alignment, QCAP’s ethical and methodological standpoints resonated with my convictions as a researcher. Having employed participatory action research principles in my work, QCAP’s model of Inclusive Innovation and its focus on co-creating knowledge and sharing its benefits convinced me even more that this team was taking the indebtedness of social sciences to the communities we work with seriously. The novel and inclusive approaches to urban innovation this gives rise to aligns with the principles I set out in my research project to provide actionable knowledge on the linkages between urban peace and smartness to both policymakers and communities working on these issues.

 

What Lies Ahead

During my three months at QCAP, I hope to collaborate, exchange, and learn as much as possible to further collective explorations into the nexus of cities, technology, and peace. Regarding collaboration, I look forward to working with Gareth Robinson, QCAP’s research lead for Education, Skills, & Inclusive Innovation, on the social inclusion component of Smart Belfast. On the topic of exchange, I hope to share some insights I gained into the role that smart technologies play in peace and reconciliation in Belfast with the QCAP community, for instance, through a brown bag lunch. Finally, I look forward to learning from the diverse community stakeholders and researchers at QCAP about their views on smart city technologies and their role in fostering social cohesion and meaningful connections in everyday life.