Over the course of this series, we’ve talked about the importance of education beyond the university. We've taken you to a public park, a cathedral, an art gallery, a library, a living room, a laundromat and to the streets. But universities do matter, as institutions and as places. In our final episode, we visit two – Goldsmiths, University of London, and Bard College Berlin – and listen to conversations taking place in- and outside their lecture halls.

First, host Agata Lisiak travels to Goldsmith’s Centre for Urban and Community Research to take part in an event with sociologists Emma Jackson, Yasmin Gunaratnam and Suzanne Hall. They discuss how community and care can be practised in academia despite its hostile and discouraging structures.

Then, from Berlin, political scientist Aysuda Kölemen discusses threats to academic freedom posed by authoritarian regimes and neoliberal universities alike. Sociologist Aslı Vatansever tells us more about academic labour activism in Germany, where over 90% of academics work on precarious fixed-term contracts.

Episode Credits

Host: Agata Lisiak
Guests: Yasmin Gunaratnam, Suzanne Hall, Emma Jackson, Aysuda Kölemen, Aslı Vatansever
Writer and Producer: Agata Lisiak
Senior Editor: Susan Stone
Sound Producer: Reece Cox
Music: Studio R
Artwork: Bose Sarmiento
In partnership with: The Sociological Review Foundation
Funded by: Volkswagen Foundation

Find more about Spatial Delight at The Sociological Review.

Episode Resources

Doreen Massey’s work quoted or mentioned in this episode:

• Time to Think, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 26.2 (2001): 257-261.
• A Global Sense of Place, Marxism Today, 1991.
• Kilburn Manifesto: After Neoliberalism? 2015.
• Vocabularies of the Economy, Kilburn Manifesto, 2015.

Also mentioned:

• Centre for Urban and Community Research, Goldsmiths, University of London
• New university job cuts fuel rising outrage on campuses, Anna Fazackerley, The Guardian, 24 October 2021
• Open Letter to Frances Corner
• The Migrant’s Paradox: Street Livelihoods and Marginal Citizenship in Britain, Suzanne M. Hall (University of Minnesota Press, 2021)
• Academic Freedom and Precarity in the Global North: Free as a Bird, ed. Aslı Vatansever and Aysuda Kölemen (Routledge, 2022)
• At the Margins of Academia: Exile, Precariousness, and Subjectivity, Aslı Vatansever (Brill, 2020)
• Network for Decent Labour in Academia
• The Dead Ladies Show
• Uncommon Sense: Cities, with Romit Chowdhury, 2022

More resources available at The Sociological Review

Geografes como Doreen Massey argumentan que el espacio es producido socialmente. En este episodio hablamos de la producción del espacio por cuerpas migrantes y escuchamos del carnaval cómo una perfecta invasión espacial.

Bose Sarmiento, artista feminista, nos transporta a las calles de Berlín durante el 8 de Marzo. El día en que las protestas del día internacional de la mujer toman la ciudad. En el caos de las demostraciones, se deja llevar por la música para encontrar a la Marea Abya Yala. Lo que guía este episodio es la curiosidad acerca de la musicalidad que rodea la protesta latinoamericana. ¿Cómo suena? ¿Cuál es su rol en la protesta? ¿De dónde surge esta “negociación del espacio" cómo la llamaría Massey, y qué espacios produce?

Para adentrarse en ello, Bose habla con la antropóloga y bailarina, Cristina Barría Knopf, una de las líderes de la colectiva Comparsa Carnaval en Berlín. Allí, Cristina nos habla del carnaval, un rito de suma importancia en Abya Yala. Por años, era durante el carnaval, que las raíces originarias lograban permear la cultura de dominación colonial. Hoy en Berlín, durante las protestas del 8M, la Comparsa trae ese rito de resistencia y alienta a mujeres y disidencias a ocupar el espacio público, les alienta a sostener la diferencia.

Episode Credits
Host: Bose Sarmiento
Guest: Ana Cristina Barría Knopf
Writer: Bose Sarmiento
Producer: Agata Lisiak
Sound Producer: Bose Sarmiento
Music: Studio R
Artwork: Bose Sarmiento
Special Thanks: All the Abya Yala collectives making noise at demonstrations
In partnership with: The Sociological Review Foundation
Funded by: Volkswagen Foundation

Find more about Spatial Delight at The Sociological Review

Episode Resources

Doreen Massey’s work quoted or mentioned in this episode:

• Space, Place and Gender (Polity Press, 1994)
• For Space (Sage, 2005)
• A Global Sense of Place, Marxism Today, 1991

Recommended resources:

• Space Invaders: Race, Gender and Bodies Out of Place, Nirmal Puwar (Bloomsbury, 2004)
• Performance, Diana Taylor (Duke University Press, 2016)
• The Archive and the Repertoire, Diana Taylor (Duke University Press, 2003)
• ¿Qué son los estudios de Performance? 2015
• Hasta abajo | Radio Ambulante Lisette Arevalo, season 12, episode 22, 2023.
• iLe: canciones contra el poder | Radio Ambulante Silvia Viñas y Eliezer Budasoff, season 12, episode 26, 2023.
• Paloma Leiva’s YouTube channel
• “Quedamos en el limbo”. ¿Quién habla sobre las cuidadoras remuneradas en el 8M?

You can find more resources at The Sociological Review

Doreen Massey was a geographer and public scholar concerned with how political action takes place not only on the level of policy, but also on the level of activism and everyday discourse. Host Agata Lisiak speaks about Massey’s political engagement with Jo Littler, Professor of Social Analysis and Cultural Politics at City, University of London. Jo is part of the editorial collective of Soundings, the journal of politics and culture Massey co-founded in 1995.

Jo and Agata meet with James Marriott from Platform, a London-based collective of artists, activists and researchers working on social and environmental justice issues. James tells us about Massey’s involvement with Platform, her “bad behaviour” – her love of challenging the system – and her lasting impact on his thinking and action.

We also discuss Jo’s recent publications: The Care Manifesto, written with the Care Collective, and Left Feminisms, a collection of interviews with feminist activists and theorists politically engaged across a variety of issues and locations.

We’d love to hear from you: what inspires your political engagement? When do you decide to act and what formats, tools, or tactics do you use? What are the joys and challenges of political collaborations that you’ve encountered? Please fill out this form to share your thoughts with us.

Episode Credits
Host: Agata Lisiak
Guests: Jo Littler, James Marriott
Writer and Producer: Agata Lisiak
Senior Editor: Susan Stone
Sound Producer: Reece Cox
Production Assistant: Adèle Martin
Music: Studio R
Artwork: Bose Sarmiento
In partnership with: The Sociological Review Foundation
Funded by: Volkswagen Foundation

Find more about Spatial Delight at The Sociological Review.

Episode Resources

Doreen Massey’s work quoted or mentioned in this episode:

• World City (Wiley, 2007)
• Space, Place, and Gender (Polity Press, 1994)
• After Neoliberalism? The Kilburn Manifesto, with Stuart Hall and Michael Rustin (Lawrence and Wishart, 2015)
• When Theory Meets Politics, Antipode: A Radical Journal of Geography 40.3 (2008): 492-497.

Also mentioned:

• Left Feminisms: Conversations on the Personal and Political, Jo Littler (Lawrence and Wishart, 2023)
• The Care Manifesto: The Politics of Interdependence, Care Collective (Verso, 2020)
• Crude Britannia: How Oil Shaped a Nation, James Marriott and Terry Macalister (Pluto Press, 2021)
• Platform London
• Take Back the City
• The Doreen Massey we knew, Jo Littler and Jeremy Gilbert, Open Democracy, 2016
• European Social Forum
• Massey, D., Hall, S., Rustin, M., et al. 1995. Uncomfortable Times, Soundings 1 (1995): 5-18.

Some of our listeners – especially the lucky ones who got hold of our postcards – have asked us about the beautiful illustration accompanying Spatial Delight. What exactly does the colourful image depict? How does it connect to Doreen Massey’s work? And, last but not least, who made it?

This bonus episode features a conversation between host Adèle Martin and Bose Sarmiento, the artist who designed the illustrations for Spatial Delight. Bose discusses the main themes and symbols in her work, and how they connect to Massey’s work, revealing the process behind her aesthetic choices.

Episode Credits

Host: Adèle Martin
Guest: Bose Sarmiento
Writer: Adèle Martin
Producer: Agata Lisiak
Senior Editor: Susan Stone
Sound Producer: Adèle Martin
Music: Studio R
Artwork: Bose Sarmiento

• Mexico City, BBC2 documentary about Mexico 1999
• Space, Place and Gender (Polity Press, 1994)

• Luna, J., & Galeana, M. 2016. Remembering Coyolxauhqui as a Birthing Text. Regeneración Tlacuilolli: UCLA Raza Studies Journal 2(1): 7-32.
• Anthropology Museum of Mexico City
• Scale model of Tenochtitlan
• La Gran Tenochtitlan, a mural by Diego Rivera, 1945

Host Agata Lisiak meets with artist and academic Heba Y. Amin at the Zilberman Gallery in Berlin. Professor Amin gives us a tour of her exhibition, When I See the Future, I Close My Eyes, and discusses how colonial and imperialist violence continues to shape our present. Her art demonstrates that technologies – even, or perhaps especially, those that appear to be “objective” – are inherently biased in favour of some populations and actually violent against others. Her art practice involves meticulous research and rigorous, subversive engagement with archives. She uses simulation, appropriation, restaging and humour to contest and disrupt dominant geographical imaginations.

We'd love to hear how art inspires you to question geographical imaginations. Is there an art piece that made you reflect on how you imagine the world and your place in it? A performance, photograph or film that has prompted a shift in your perspective? Please take a moment to fill out this form and share your thoughts with us.

Episode Credits

Host: Agata Lisiak
Guest: Heba Y. Amin
Writer and Producer: Agata Lisiak
Senior Editor: Susan Stone
Sound Producer: Reece Cox
Production Assistant: Adèle Martin
Music: Studio R
Artwork: Bose Sarmiento
Special thanks to: Zilberman Gallery
In partnership with: The Sociological Review Foundation
Funded by: Volkswagen Foundation

Find more about Spatial Delight at The Sociological Review.

Episode Resources

Doreen Massey’s work quoted or mentioned in this episode:

• The Shape of the World (The Open University, 1995)
• A Place in the World, edited by Doreen Massey and Pat Jess (The Open University, 1995)
• World City (Wiley, 2007)

Heba Y. Amin’s work:

• Windows on the West, hand-woven Jacquard textile, 2019
• Marseille’s Pyramid, sculpture and video work, 2019
• Atom Elegy, miniature model and live photo reconstruction, 2022
• Operation Sunken Sea, installation, performance, video, 2018
• The Earth is an Imperfect Ellipsoid, photography, text, projection, 2016
• The General’s Stork, mixed media, 2016 - ongoing
• The General’s Stork (Sternberg Press 2020)
• As Birds Flying كما تحلق الطيور video, 2016
• Heba Y. Amin’s website
• Zilberman Gallery website

Find more about Heba Y. Amin's work at The Sociological Review

Though she was a life-long Liverpool FC fan, Doreen Massey felt like a “space invader” whenever she attended matches, as she’d often be one of the few women on football terraces. Inspired by Massey’s usage of the term, sociologist Nirmal Puwar developed it into a sociological concept to understand “what happens when women and racialized minorities take up ‘privileged’ positions which have not been ‘reserved’ for them”. What kind of bodies are the somatic norm? What are the conditions of inclusion?

Spatial Delight host Agata Lisiak speaks with Nirmal Puwar about her book Space Invaders: Race, Gender and Bodies Out of Place (2004), and about the postcolonial acts of space invading that Nirmal and her collaborators staged in Coventry’s iconic cathedral.

We’d love to hear your stories too. Are you a space invader? Please share your experiences with us here

Episode Credits
Host: Agata Lisiak
Guest: Nirmal Puwar
Also Featured: Doreen Massey
Writer and Producer: Agata Lisiak
Senior Editor: Susan Stone
Sound Producer: Reece Cox
Production Assistant: Adèle Martin
Music: Studio R
Artwork: Bose Sarmiento
Special Thanks to: Nitin Sawhney, Kuldip Powar
In partnership with: The Sociological Review Foundation
Funded by: Volkswagen Foundation

Find more about Spatial Delight at The Sociological Review.

Episode Resources

Doreen Massey’s work quoted or mentioned in this episode:

• Space, Place and Gender (Polity Press, 1994)
• When Theory Meets Politics, Antipode, 40.3 (2008)

Nirmal Puwar’s selected works:

• Space Invaders: Race, Gender and Bodies Out of Place (Bloomsbury, 2004)
• The Noise of the Past
• Unraveling, a film directed by Kuldip Powar, music by Nitin Sawhney, produced by Nirmal Puwar and Sanjay Sharma, 2008
• Meetings: John Berger in the Library, an essay from A Jar of Wild Flowers, 2016
• Walking Through Litter in Life Writing Projects
• Indomitable Mint in The Garden Zine
• Compiling Maxwell Street by Tim Cresswell, Sociological Review Magazine, 2019
• In Memoriam: Tree Felling at The Plaza and In Transition: Comrades for the City – films by Adele Mary Reed in collaboration with Nirmal Puwar and Paul Chokran
• Puwar, N. and Sharma, S. 2011. Introduction: War Cries, The Senses and Society, 6:3, 261-266.

El paisaje físico y político de un país es un reflejo de las relaciones de poder en la sociedad. ¿Es posible hacer que estas relaciones sean más igualitarias? ¿Es posible cambiar significativamente lo que Doreen Massey llamó "geometrías del poder" y crear espacios sociales que representen los intereses de los sectores históricamente excluidos de la sociedad?

Doreen Massey vio en Venezuela un intento prometedor de generar una nueva geometría del poder, más justa y democrática. En este episodio, el escritor venezolano Erick Moreno Superlano evalúa el éxito de esta iniciativa política una década después de la visita de Massey a Caracas. Para hacerlo, conversa sobre los proyectos de autogobierno impulsados por el gobierno de Hugo Chávez con dos expertos, María Eugenia Freitez y Reinaldo Iturriza.

Episode Credits
Host: Erick Moreno Superlano
Guests: María Eugenia Fréitez, Reinaldo Iturriza
Also Featured: Hugo Chávez
Writer: Erick Moreno Superlano
Producer: Agata Lisiak
Sound Producer: Jhiliem Miller
Music: Studio R
Artwork: Bose Sarmiento
In partnership with: The Sociological Review Foundation
Funded by: Volkswagen Foundation & Experimental Humanities Collaborative Network

Find more about Spatial Delight at The Sociological Review.

Episode Resources

Doreen Massey’s work quoted or mentioned in this episode:

• Geometrías internacionales del poder y la política de una «ciudad global»- pensamientos desde Londres, Cuadernos del CENDES, 2008
• When Theory Meets Politics, Antipode, 2008
• Espacio y sociedad: experimentos con la espacialidad del poder y democracia, La Oficina Ediciones, 2011
• Learning From Latin America, Soundings, 2012

Also mentioned:

• Venezuelan Social Conflict in a Global Context, Edgardo Lander, Latin American Perspectives, 2005
• The Possibilities of a Politics of Place Beyond Place? A Conversation with Doreen Massey, Human Geography Research Group, Sophie Bond and David Featherstone, Scottish Geographical Journal, 2009
• Golpe de Timón, Hugo Chávez, 2012
• The Socialist Transformation of Venezuela: The Geographical Dimension of Political Strategy, Ricardo Menéndez in Spatial Politics: Essays For Doreen Massey, 2013
• Doreen Massey and Latin America, Perla Zusman in Doreen Massey: Critical Dialogues, 2018

For Doreen Massey, every place poses a challenge, “the challenge of negotiating a here-and-now” – or what she called throwntogetherness. In this episode, we hear about different struggles to make cities more liveable – and more just – for the many, not the few. We discuss various limitations of the dominant political structures and why it is crucial to put continuous pressure on those who hold power.

Agata Lisiak and her co-host for this episode, Anna Richter, speak to geographer Ash Amin about urban commons and social empowerment. Urban scholar Carmel Christy K J tells us about the intersections of social and environmental justice in the port city of Kochi, and anthropologist Ayşe Çavdar uncovers the politics of mass housing projects in Turkey. Also, Anna and Agata make use of the sunny weather to go to a park and ask Berliners what they think makes a good city.

What do you think makes a good city? Please let us know by filling out this form.

Episode Credits

Host: Agata Lisiak
Co-host: Anna Richter
Guests: Ash Amin, Carmel Christy, Ayşe Çavdar
Also Featured: Doreen Massey
Writer and Producer: Agata Lisiak
Senior Editor: Susan Stone
Sound Producer: Reece Cox
Production Assistant: Adèle Martin
Music: Studio R
Artwork: Bose Sarmiento
Special Thanks: Serpentine Gallery
In partnership with: The Sociological Review Foundation
Funded by: Volkswagen Foundation

Find more about Spatial Delight at The Sociological Review.

Episode Resources
Doreen Massey’s work quoted or mentioned in this episode:
Doreen Massey interviewed at London’s Serpentine Gallery, 2006
Cities for the Many Not the Few, with Ash Amin and Nigel Thrift (Policy Press, 2000)
For Space (Sage, 2003)
On Space and the City. In: City Worlds, edited by John Allen, Doreen Massey and Steve Pile (Routledge, 1999)

Recommended resources:
Land of Strangers, Ash Amin (Polity, 2013)
Grammars of the Urban Ground, edited by Ash Amin and Michele Lancione (Duke UP, 2022)
Ekümenopolis, dir. Ucu Olmayan Şehir (2012)
Geniş Zaman – a weekly YouTube program on contemporary political issues hosted by Ayşe Çavdar and Aysuda Kölemen (in Turkish)
The ‘Deutsche Wohnen & Co enteignen’ initiative
Housing Expropriation Referendum in Berlin: How it was won and what comes next?, Urban Political podcast, 2021
Housing Struggles in Berlin: Part I Rent Cap, Urban Political podcast, 2021
Housing struggles in Berlin: Part II Grassroots Expropriation Activism, Urban Political podcast, 2021
Richter, A. and D. Humphry. 2021. Ja! Damit Berlin unser Zuhause bleibt! That Berlin will remain our home! حتى تظل برلين بيتنا Berlin evimiz k