bild på målad vägg med stege och färgburkar

In short: Join us for weekly Monday sessions (10:15–12:00) starting September 1 in room NI:B0824. These gatherings are dedicated to building urban humanities at IUR through collaborative writing, research development, shared reflection, and informal exchange. Whether you are exploring the field for the first time or are already working within it, you are welcome to join as often as you can.

What is the Institute for Urban Research?

The Institute for Urban Research (IUR) is a university-wide interdisciplinary research center that brings together all urban research at Malmö University. IUR aims to be an internationally leading center for research on urban justice.

What is Urban Humanities?

Urban humanities is a new thematic branch of the Institute for Urban Research. This interdisciplinary field combines urban studies, environmental design, and the humanities to reflect on contemporary urban conditions.

Projects in urban humanities often include public history, participatory art, storytelling, walking tours, mapping initiatives, and digital archives. The field emphasizes engaged scholarship that connects academic work to urban publics and communities, often through collaborations among historians, urban planners, artists, architects, anthropologists, and community members to co-produce knowledge about urban environments.

Urban humanities also critically engages with practices of opening up, inviting in, and holding space—sites where urban experience is produced and intensified, generating new insights into urban relations, situations, and processes. This approach foregrounds how knowledge is co-produced across disciplinary boundaries and social contexts, challenging traditional academic hierarchies and redefining the role of the humanities in public life.

Weekly Urban Humanities Research Group Meetings
IUR’s Urban Humanities Research Group meets weekly for focused work sessions designed to create time and structure for concrete progress—toward both individual research goals and shared thematic development. While some meetings may address the needs of individual researchers, the primary emphasis is on sustained collaborative work.

Building on previous discussions, particularly at IUR’s retreat in Athens, our agenda for the coming term includes:

• Developing our co-creation platform
• Drafting a co-authored article exploring how urban humanities has taken shape in different contexts
• Preparing a major research funding application centered on the theme of urban humanities

These regular gatherings are intended not only to support academic work but also to foster a collegial, inclusive, and socially grounded environment. By meeting weekly, we aim to build a rhythm that supports collaboration, encourages informal connections, and offers a space for all interested researchers to help shape the future direction of urban humanities at IUR.

Contact