Call for Abstracts: “Urban Lives and Environmental Changes”

IFRA-Nigeria and CHSD launch a call for abstracts for a one-day transdisciplinary Roundtable on “Urban Lives and Environmental Changes” that will take place on May 10^th, 2022, at Arthur Mbanefo Digital Research Centre, University of Lagos. This Roundtable is co-organized by early-career researchers from the Center of Housing and Sustainable Development (CHSD), University of Lagos and IFRA-Nigeria (Institute of African Studies, University of Ibadan), and is part of a collaborative conference series organized by the Institut Français du Nigéria, the French Embassy in Nigeria and IFRA-Nigeria.

 This call is now closed, applicants will receive updates by the end of March. 

The Roundtable seeks to invite early-career scholars to present their research on the link between Urban Lives and Environmental Changes. Therefore, we will accept proposals only from PhD Students and postdoc researchers (5 years after their PhD defense). We invited researchers interested in presenting at the conference to submit their abstracts before March 11th, 2022, 5pm.

Link to the PDF version of the call for abstracts

This one-day roundtable will question the relations between Nature and urban collectives (authorities and city-dwellers). It aims at creating bridges between various Humanities disciplines and scholars and non-academic urban development experts. Thus we would specifically appreciate transdisciplinary papers that tackle impact of environmental changes on urban lives, human and non-human. Contributions could either focus on cities as products of interwoven physical and social realities, and/or on cities as contexts of asymmetrical power relations within and in-between urban collectives regarding environmental changes.

This one-day roundtable will be an excellent opportunity for early-career researchers to discuss their research with their peers as well as senior scholars and compare their research with other case studies.

We would particularly welcome contributions based on one or several case studies on the following sub-themes:

• City dwellers and environmental impacts: Cities are particularly vulnerable to the multiple effects of environmental changes observed in recent years (floodings, sea-level rise, heat waves, drought, storms, air pollution, waste etc.). Extant studies are focused either on urban infrastructures and climate change mitigation or on management, resilience and political governance of these environmental changes in urban areas. However, the extent of urban dwellers’ interactions with their environment and their impact are yet to be extensively documented. Thus we ask: what are the social, economic, and political impacts of environmental issues on urban dwellers' lives?
  Contributions could be about the way urban dwellers perceive, observe, cope, contest, and engage with changes in their cities, and/or how these interactions reflect and in turn, refract broader social, economic and political realities. 

• Urban Natures and Conservation: In response to the global context of environmental changes, the concepts of sustainable and resilient cities have become central in international conservation paradigms. Thus, it creates an institutional focus - from local to international levels - on natural spaces (e.g. wetlands, lagoon banks, green spaces as urban forests, parks, gardens, roadside trees) and natural materials (e.g. sand, wood and water) which aims at protecting and rehabilitating the diversity of urban nature and at educating city dwellers about its value. Besides, day-to-day practices and knowledge production by city dwellers may highlight various forms of transmission, adaptation, conservation or destruction of urban nature.
  Contributions could be about how these international conservation paradigms are either implemented or ignored (in African cities or elsewhere) and/or how urban dwellers perceive, participate, contest or ignore urban nature conservation with reference to these paradigms or not.

Therefore, we will specifically welcome empirical contributions analyzing the interactions between environmental impacts and city dwellers, and reflecting on natures in the city including conservation practices of different stakeholders in any form at varying scales. 

Application requirements:

We invite early-career researchers (PhD Candidates and Postdoc no more than five years after their defense) interested in presenting at the conference to send one document (.doc) including the following information (in this order): 

• a title (50 words)
• email 
• phone
• current location
• 4 keywords
• an abstract (300-350 words)
• a bio-note with affiliation and position (and date of PhD defense if applicable) (100 words) 
• a statement of purpose (300-350 words)

Email for submissions:  This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Submission Deadline: Deadline for submission is extended to March 11th, 5pm. (We will specifically welcome contributions coming from female early-career scholars). 

Publication of conference papers: Papers enhanced with comments and suggestions raised during the roundtable will possibly be published together in a special volume of IFRA-Nigeria Working Paper Series

Venue: Arthur Mbanefo Digital Research Centre, University of Lagos

The roundtable will be live streamed, but we wish all panelists to be present on-site. Limited funding will be available for transport and accommodation for scholars based in Nigeria but outside of Lagos.

COVID-19 protocols will be observed. Participants with recent international travel history who wish to attend the conference in person would be required to show results of their most recent COVID-19 test or take such test before confirming attendance

For further enquiries, please send an email to:  This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Members of the Conference Organizing Committee:

Ǫlúwątóbilóbą Adéwùnmí
PhD Student in Sustainable Urbanization (Wits-TUB-UNILAG Urban Lab Programme), Centre for Housing and Sustainable Development, University of Lagos, Lagos, Nigeria.
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Rémi Jenvrin
PhD Student in Geography, UMR 8586-Prodig, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, CNRS, Paris, France
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Damilola Odekunle
PhD Student and Lecturer, Department of Urban and Regional Planning, University of Lagos, Lagos, Nigeria.
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Juliette Reflé
Research Associate and Research Project Manager, IFRA-Nigeria, Institute of African Studies, University of Ibadan, Ibadan, Nigeria
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With the support of Institut Français Paris and the Fonds d'Alembert