±¬ÁÏTV

A one-day conference for Post-Graduate Researchers and Early Career Researchers organised by Sheffield Urbanism, ±¬ÁÏTV. 

This conference will explore the webs of epistemic, socio-economic, technological and ecological relations that produce inequalities throughout and within urban areas.  

WHAT: One-day conference

WHERE: ±¬ÁÏTV, Mappin Building

WHEN: 1st July 2026, 0900-1700, 1700-1900 Lecture and Networking

Building on the highly successful researcher-led meeting on Emerging Urban Inequalities in 2025, we are now organising a second one-day conference aimed at early career and post-graduate researchers in urban studies. This year we will continue our focus on empirical and theoretical work on urban inequalities, turning our emphasis from emerging dynamics to how different types of inequality are entangled with each other, and how they are impacting residents’ everyday lives. Our goal is to provide a supportive and engaging forum for work by postgraduate and early career researchers from across the urban studies community at Sheffield, the UK and internationally. 

The conference ‘Entangled Urban Inequalities’ is organised by a cross-Faculty team from the Urban Institute, School of Information, Journalism and Communication, and the School of Geography and Planning, including staff and PGRs. 

We welcome contributions that engage critically and creatively with the theme in relation to how inequalities are produced, experienced and contested across different urban contexts, scales and sites. Rather than organise around traditional categories of housing, transport, faith, migration, care, or education etc, we invite papers that engage with specific entanglements of power, technology and governance, including but not limited to: 

• hierarchical relations and dominant epistemes (such as governance relations and colonial/racialised/extractive regimes of knowledge)
• technologies and infrastructures of control (such as platform urbanism, AI and robotics, neurotechnology, property regimes, extractive labour and supply chains)
• sites and modes of resistance (including liminal spaces, marginal urban life, everyday practices, collective action, as well as alternatives imaginaries). 

We also encourage contributions that think across these themes, reflecting on how urban inequalities are interconnected, relational and unevenly lived.

To apply, please complete the conference application form here 

The form will ask for

-           your name, role and institution;

-           a 150-word abstract outlining your proposed presentation;

-           a 100-word statement of motivation explaining your interest in the event.

The form will also ask for any dietary needs, access requirements, your preferred language, and your time zone. The conference is planned as an in-person event; however if there is sufficient interest we will try to make some hybrid or asynchronous participation possible. We welcome submissions from PGRs and ECRs across disciplines whose work speaks to urban inequalities in broad and imaginative ways. The deadline for abstract submission is Monday 8th June 2026, and applicants will be notified of the outcome by Wednesday 10th June 2026.

Please note, we would have loved to cover your costs, but our budget will only cover lunches and refreshments. You will need to find your own travel and accommodation costs.

For more information, please email EMU Conference Team: emu-conference-group@sheffield.ac.uk