Research grants: Cities and Urbanisation

Dr Andrew Harris

Dr Charlotte Lemanski

• Embedded in the city? Participation and urban governance for low-income households in Cape Town
  British Academy Small Research Grant: 2009-2011: £7,500
  Exploring mobilisation strategies amongst urban citizens who are neither among the poorest nor the wealthiest sectors of urban society, to challenge much urban governance research which focuses on slum dwellers and/or the urban elite.
• The voices of the poor in urban governance: an India - South Africa comparison
  British Council Researcher Exchange Programme: 2008 –2009: £3,519
  The project established a comparative framework and institutional link between South Africa and India, and included and investigation into the mobilisation strategies of residents of unauthorised colonies in Delhi, India. As a stand-alone project, this also provided a comparative perspective on similar research in South Africa (see below).
  Work on South Africa-India links is continuing through a wider research project led by Witwatersrand University (SA) and the Centre de Sciences Humaines (India).
• The voices of the poor in urban governance: overlapping spaces of community-level political participation in South Africa
  Royal Geographical Society Small Research Grant: 2008 2009: £3,000
  Examined how the voice of poor residents is heard in urban governance, through both formal institutional channels (i.e. representative and participatory democracy) and informal community channels (e.g. mass protest, community forums), in Cape Town, South Africa.

Dr Alex Singleton

• Spatial interaction modelling  
  ESRC:2008-2009: £87,217
  This project reflects the "renaissance of geodemographics" for public sector applications in policing, health, education and local government. It aims to create new geodemographic classifications appropriate to the Higher Education (HE) sector, and apply various forms of spatial interaction modelling to processes of student choice and recruitment. It will provide  those engaged in the HE sector (HE institutions, schools and prospective students) with a tool to support strategic decisions and anticipate their likely outcomes.
• Knowledge Transfer Partnership-Local futures/AEG      
  KTP/LFG/AEG:  2010-2011:  £ 147,431
  This Knowledge Transfer Partnership with the Local Futures Group aims to develop a new web-based system to include state of the art mapping and community interaction technology. Such a system will improve the commercial success of the company (through higher take-up rates and re-subscriptions) and improve its clients’ abilities to use publicly available data for comparative analysis, policy improvement and capacity building.