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Hustle Urbanism: Making Life Work in Nairobi
Hybrid event. For webinar registration, please use the link below.
Book launch & discussion with the author: Tatiana Thieme (UCL)
Discussant: Sangwon Chae (Oxford)
In Nairobi’s underserved neighborhoods, “hustle” has emerged as both a vital survival strategy and a way of life for youth. Exploring the multiple meanings and manifestations of the hustle economy across different scenarios of provisioning, distribution, exchange, learning and mobilizing, Hustle Urbanism draws on more than a decade of ethnographic engagement to center the logics, perspectives and inventive strategies of a group of youth who constantly navigate job scarcity, inadequate basic services and climate induced harms. Tatiana Thieme shows how young people develop tools of resistance against the legacies of colonial violence and uneven urban development while carving out spaces of opportunity for themselves and their peers. Filling a significant gap in both existing scholarship and popular discussion, Hustle Urbanism offers critical theorization of precarious urban environments and the affirmative modes of making life work in the city against the odds.
30% Discount Code: FSS25
Order online at www.combinedacademic.co.uk
Dr Tatiana Thieme is associate professor of human geography at University College London. Tatiana’s research focuses on different forms of entrepreneurial and makeshift urbanism and their effects. More specifically, she is interested in the cultural and economic geographies of work that takes place outside of (or alongside) waged economies, and everyday coping strategies in precarious urban environments.
Sangwon Chae is a DPhil student in Geography and the Environment at the University of Oxford. Sangwon’s doctoral study explores the political dynamics of alternative urban place-making, or the makings of alternative urbanism, in the context of East Asian urban developmentalism and its paradigm shift.
Date:
14 October 2025, 16:00
Venue:
13 Bevington Road, 13 Bevington Road OX2 6NB
Venue Details:
Seminar Room, African Studies Centre
Speakers:
Tatiana Thieme (University College London),
Sangwon Chae (Oxford)
Organising department:
Centre for African Studies
Organiser:
Jason Mosley (University of Oxford)
Part of:
Northeast Africa Forum seminar series
Booking required?:
Recommended
Booking url:
https://events.teams.microsoft.com/event/784a37bf-371d-4bab-8c66-19cebadcae03@cc95de1b-97f5-4f93-b4ba-fe68b852cf91
Audience:
Public
Editor:
Jason Mosley
