The news about AI is thrillingly difficult to keep track of – we have learnt that its hard to distinguish real videos from AI generated ones, AI can hallucinate and will do so more as it trains itself on its own regurgitations, it makes up academic citations, it gently gaslights people into falling in love with it, and its causing teachers and professors to prep for obsolescence. What is a teacher to do? Click here to read my thoughts on AI in education.
Category Archives: Uncategorized
Réflexion sur les liens sociaux des Parisien.nes, rapport de l’APUR
Voici mon intervention pour l’APUR, autour de la restitution de leur rapport sur les liens sociaux et le capital social – un rapport riche et nuancé, l’information pertinente pour les stratégies de la résilience de Paris. Cliquez ici.
Linking Theory and Evidence
Writing a thesis or term paper? Linking theory and evidence is key to writing both the literature review and the empirical parts of your research. Click here to read an example of what we call ‘iteration of theory and evidence’.
You can also check out my earlier blog on ‘writing a literature review’. Remember, its not a literature review, its a literature analysis!
Bipartisan Disdain of the American University
American higher education is in political upheaval. The events of the last few weeks and months, at Harvard, Penn, MIT, New College, and elsewhere, have put the internal politics of universities on the front page. In this short blog, I argue that there is a bipartisan disdain for the university in North America; both the left and right scoff at the university, though for different reasons. Click here to read more.
The Smart City in India
Cities are important sites for the digital transition, and for investigating the impacts of technology on everyday life. In this blog, I explain what the smart city is, and outline what is specific to the smart city in India. Read it here.
Comparative urbanism in the GLM master’s program
How do we compare cities? What can we learn through comparative urbanism?
It is a truism that cities are unique – Amman is not Tokyo, and New Delhi is not Brasilia.
It is also a truism that cities have much in common – all cities face social inequality, all cities manage infrastructure (buses, water, electricity, waste management), all cities are adapting to the ecological transition, all cities have political and policy legacies that can constrain change, all cities have changing relationships with other levels of government, and all cities share learnings with each other (through regional governance, institutional networks of cities, fact- finding missions and more).
If you are interested in urban professional training, GLM (Governing the Large Metropolis master’s program) or the Urban School at Sciences Po, read my blog on our faculty that teach in our regional specialization!
Practical Strategies for Fieldwork
Are you doing qualitative or fieldwork-based research for your master’s or PhD? Click here for practical strategies for managing the information that you will collect on purpose or encounter by happenstance.
An introduction to FSI or Floor Space Index in Mumbai
I spoke to journalist Sabah Virani of Citizen Matters Mumbai about FSI and its role in Mumbai’s housing market and urban development. Read the article here. Read my history of FSI published in Urban Studies and a shorter article on policy change and FSI in EPW.
So you wrote a master’s thesis…
Congratulations, you have just finished and defended your master’s thesis! Click here for some ideas and encouragement to disseminate and valorize your research.
Financialising Floor Space in Mumbai, 1880-2015, Urban Studies
As an accompaniment to my paper published in Urban Studies in February 2022, I have written a blog on their website. If you want to learn more about urban policy in Mumbai, click here.