Keynote Speakers

Mats Fridlund is Deputy Director for the Gothenburg Research Infrastructure in Digital Humanities (GRIDH) and Researcher at Department of Literature, History of Ideas, and Religion (LIR) at University of Gothenburg. He is Associate Professor of History of Science and Ideas at University of Gothenburg and Associate Professor in Digital History at University of Turku. In his research he studies the politics and culture of modern science, technology and innovation, with a focus on the technologies of terrorism and often with the use of digital methods. At GRIDH he provides research support in integrative interdisciplinary digital project design, critical digital humanities, digital text analysis and mixed methods. He is born in Sweden where he studied engineering physics and history of science and technology at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology, from which Department of History of Science and Technology he received his PhD in 1999.

His current research primarily concern the history of terrorisms. An ongoing study focus on the development of urban terrormindedness, how cities and citizens since the 19th century have used various technologies to cope with different forms of man-made terror and terrorism. A second study investigates the materiality of non-state terrorism by investigating the role appropriation of engineering expertise and industrial technologies such as dynamite revolvers have played in the rise of modern revolutionary terrorism during the long 19th century. His research on the history of terrorism has been competitively awarded grants from national Swedish research financiers.

His other main research interest concerns digital history where he primarily focus on the use of digital humanities research methods within historical research. In addition to pursuing digital history research he is involved in organizational activities aimed at institutionalizing digital humanities within the Nordic countries. 

Read more: Mats Fridlund | University of Gothenburg (gu.se)

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Maria Kaika is professor in Urban, Regional and Environmental Planning at the University of Amsterdam’s (UvA) Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences.

She holds a PhD in Geography from the University of Oxford and an MSc in Architecture and Planning from the National Technical University of Athens. She has held tenured posts at the Universities of Oxford and Manchester and visiting and honorary professorships  in several European Universities. Currently, she is Director of the Centre for Urban studies and Chair in Urban Regional and Environmental Planning at the University of Amsterdam. She is recipient of the 2017 Jim Lews Prize for the most innovate  academic publication (with L Ruggiero), and of the 2021  European Award of Excellence in Teaching in the Humanities and Social Sciences. Her research focuses on urban political ecology, the relation between economic crisis and environmental and housing marginalization, and the embodied politics of infrastructures.  

Since 2010, she has been the co-editor in chief of the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research and sits on the Editorial Board of European Urban and Regional Studies and Human Geography. Her work has received funding from national and international research councils and organisations (including the British Academy, and EU Framework and Marie Curie programmes).

She is author/editor of: Turning Up the Heat: Urban Political Ecology for a Climate Emergency (2023 Manchester University Press; with R Keil, T Mandler, Y Tzaninis); Class meets Land: The Embodied History of Land Financialization (with L Ruggiero; in print 2024 University of California Press); The Political Ecology of Austerity (2021, Routledge, New York; with R Calvario and G Velegrakis);   Urbanizing degrowth: Five steps towards a Radical Spatial Degrowth Agenda for planning in the face of climate emergency (2023 Urban Studies Special Issue with Varvarousis, A, Demaria, F and March, H); In the Nature of Cities: urban political ecology and the metabolism of urban environments (2006 with N Heynen and E Swyngedouw; Routledge, London); and  City of Flows: Modernity, Nature and the City (2005; Routledge, New York).

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Publications list   https://independent.academia.edu/mariakaika
Web page                https://tinyurl.com/http-mariakaika-uva

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Other Publications:

Austerity: an Environmentally Dangerous Idea

“Don’t call me resilient again”: the New Urban Agenda as Immunology 

Upscaling without innovation: taking the edge off grassroot initiatives with scaling-up in Amsterdam’s Anthropocene forest

The refugees’ right to the centre of the city: City branding versus city commoning in Athens

Between the frog and the eagle: claiming a ‘Scholarship of Presence’ for the Anthropocene