Event



27th Annual Public Lecture: Ananya Roy

“The 21st Century Metropolis: Making Urban Futures”
| Claudia Cohen Hall B-17

Ananya Roy, Professor of City and Regional Planning at the University of California Berkeley, will deliver Urban Studies’ twenty-seventh annual lecture, entitled, “The 21st Century Metropolis: Making Urban Futures.”  The lecture will be held on March 1, 2011 starting at 5:00 in G-17 Claudia Cohen Hall, 249 South 36th Street.  The lecture is free and open to the public.

Watch the lecture here!

Professor Roy teaches comparative urban studies and international development and has studied, theorized, and written about urban life and development in cities around the world.  Drawing on her knowledge of cities in South Asia, the Middle East, Latin America, Africa, and the Far East, Roy’s recent work seeks to expand the definition of urban and offers revolutionary new ways of thinking about what is a global city. Her most recent book, Poverty Capital: Microfinance and the Making of Development (Routledge, 2010), examines the fairness and effectiveness of poverty alleviation strategies.  Roy is now completing an edited book (with Aihwa Ong) titled Worlding Cities: Asian Experiments and the Art of Being Global (Blackwell, 2010).

Roy teaches both undergraduate and graduate courses and supervises doctoral students in departments ranging from City and Regional Planning to Geography to Education. She holds an affiliate faculty position in the Energy and Resources Group. Roy is a dynamic and passionate teacher, as shown by the numerous teaching awards that she has received. In 2006, Roy was awarded the Distinguished Teaching Award, the highest teaching honor UC Berkeley bestows on its faculty. Also in 2006, Roy was awarded the Distinguished Faculty Mentors award, a recognition bestowed by the Graduate Assembly of the University of California at Berkeley. In 2008, Roy was the recipient of the Golden Apple Teaching award, the only teaching award given by the student body. In a blog article (http://clog.dailycal.org/tag/professors/) describing Roy’s teaching, the author noted that the remarkable demand for her course, Global Poverty: Challenges and Hopes in the New Millennium, and characterized her teaching this way:  “Her name is Ananya Roy, and she’s out to make you care, damnit.” Most recently, she was named 2009 California Professor of the Year by CASE/ Carnegie Foundation.

Roy holds a B.A. (1992) in Comparative Urban Studies from Mills College, a M.C.P. (1994) and a Ph.D. (1999) from the Department of City and Regional Planning at the University of California at Berkeley. She is also the author of City Requiem, Calcutta: Gender and the Politics of Poverty (University of Minnesota Press, 2003), co-editor of Urban Informality: Transnational Perspectives from the Middle East, South Asia, and Latin America (Lexington Books, 2004) and co-editor of The Practice of International Health (Oxford University Press, 2008). She also serves as Education Director of the Blum Center for Developing Economies and as co-Director of the Global Metropolitan Studies Center. From 2005 to 2009 Roy served as Associate Dean of International and Area Studies.

Open a copy of Ananya Roy's "The 21st Century Metropolis."