Past Events

Pre-Registration Required by October 6: register here. Co-Sponsored by the Social Sciences Matrix   The Center for Global Metropolitan Studies and the Social Science Matrix are pleased to invite you to participate in our campus-wide, interdisciplinary research initiative on “Critical Infrastructure Under Stress.” The objective of the year-long series of events is to build connections across disciplines […]

This symposium begins with a keynote talk on ‘Restoring ecological processes in an urban river: the Isar in Munich’, presented by Dr Aude Zingraff-Hamed (Technical University of Munich).  The Isar demonstrates how an important urban river can be restored to yield ecological and social benefits.  Next are graduate student research projects on riparian vegetation along […]

Register here for the talk on zoom.   It has been widely asserted that abolition is not simply the dismantling of police, but the building of spaces and futures organized by its alternatives. There is arguably no better way to see this, and to hold Ruthie Gilmore’s call to ‘change everything’, than through engagement with […]

Video recording available   A discussion between artist, Olalekan Jeyifous and UC Berkeley assistant professor of Geography, Dr. Brandi T. Summers on the generative power of collaboration and the potential for speculative architecture as a means to develop comprehensive constructions of urban Utopias/Dystopias that engage with a variety of social, political, and environmental realities.    […]

The field of global urban studies has seen renewed interest in comparisons. A “comparative gesture,” advocated by urban geographers such as Jennifer Robinson and others, has been influential in urban studies in the last decade. In this talk, Xuefei Ren discusses how urban studies can make a leap from a “comparative gesture” to theoretically engaged […]

Register for the Zoom Webinar at the following link: https://berkeley.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJUtf-GoqT0jGNOqYFL4YmJBb8oGVmPsqGaX Co-Sponsored by the Institute for Transportation Studies Operations research methods have been used to identify and evaluate solutions to the reconfiguration of public school attendance area boundaries for over fifty years. In broad terms, the school redistricting problem seeks to find capacity-feasible assignments of students […]

Video recording available!   Over 25 years ago, Rwanda was almost on the brink of being wiped off the world map. Rwanda had just gone through one of the twentieth century’s worst genocides: the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi. This tragedy left the country’s infrastructure completely destroyed. Everything had to be built from scratch. Yet […]

Please join us for the Fall 2020 Virtual Open House for DE students, faculty, and anyone interested in joining the DE! Come to learn about the GMS Designated Emphasis (DE, a PhD minor), play urban-themed pictionary, and meet with core faculty, faculty affiliates, and other DE students. We will also share funding opportunities through the […]

GMS Core Faculty Brandi Thompson Summers will be discussing her research and her book, Black in Place, with Samir Meghelli, curator of the Smithsonian Anacostia Community Museum. The online event is sponsored by the Smithsonian ACM and American University’s Metropolitan Studies Center. For details on how to attend, please see the DC Public Library.