The British Academy appoints Caroline Knowles as Urban Infrastructures of Well-Being Programme Director

The British Academy is delighted to announce the appointment of Caroline Knowles, Professor of Sociology at Goldsmiths, University of London, as Director of the Urban Infrastructures of Well-Being Programme.

This programme is funded by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy as part of the Government’s £1.5 billion Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) and is being delivered by the British Academy in partnership with the Royal Academy of Engineering. It supports 23 innovative, interdisciplinary research projects exploring how formal and informal infrastructures interact to affect the well-being of people in cities across the Global South.

Since 2017 Caroline Knowles has also directed the British Academy’s Cities & Infrastructure programme. Her research and publications explore the ways in which particular strands of globalisation in the movements of objects and people compose and connect cities. Her most recent books are Flip-Flop: A Journey Through Globalisation’s Backroads (2014, Pluto) and Hong Kong: Migrant Lives, Landscapes and Journeys with Douglas Harper (2010, University of Chicago Press).

Professor Caroline Knowles said:

“Urban Infrastructures of Well-Being is an exciting new programme which promises to provide new angles, approaches and data with which to tackle some of the most intractable issues that make life difficult for the poorest communities in cities of the Global South. These range from wide-scale human displacement and the provision of public services to food security and environmental health. It is a privilege to work with the 23 successful teams bringing together researchers and practitioners from the UK and 20 different counties across Latin America, Asia, Africa and the Middle East.”

Professor Simon Goldhill, Foreign Secretary of the British Academy, said:

“The British Academy is delighted to appoint Professor Knowles as Urban Infrastructures of Well-Being Programme Director. Her contributions over the past couple of years to the success of the Academy’s portfolio of funded research on issues related to cities and infrastructure have been invaluable and I look forward to working with her on this new programme, which promises to deliver fascinating research with real-life impact in cities across the Global South”.