I was the organiser of this major international conference exploring emerging themes and critical methodologies at the frontiers of urban theory and practice, hosted at UCL in 2019.

Comprised of 34 panels and six plenary sessions, it was organised according to three broad thematics: Reshaping Urban Spaces, Remaking Urban Experiences, and Redefining Urban Futures.

Panels were curated to provide scope for researchers to engage across the wide field of urban studies and related disciplines, and to share knowledge on similar issues across different regional contexts, and from different analytical and disciplinary approaches.

The conference made use of a range of formats (roundtables, inter-panel report backs) to stimulate collegial exchanges across different geographical and disciplinary perspectives.

We issued an Open Call for Papers in late June 2019, while commencing the intensive process of inviting speakers from different regions across the world for the planned plenary sessions. Our steering committee sifted through an impressive 174 submissions to the Open Call, and finally selected 60 of those papers for presentation, allocated across multiple parallel sessions in an increasingly complex, ever-expanding, three-day structure.

I managed the impressive feat of organising all the materials to our website and co-ordinating registration; booking rooms at short notice, and organising wayfinding; finalising travel and accommodation arrangements for participants from different regions across the globe, and managing the modest financial subsidies we were able to offer; as well as organising a cohort of helpers to support preparation and delivery of the conference on the day. I commissioned and worked with Guglielmo Rossi (Bandiera) who set to work on translating a complex field of information into navigable and memorable designs for programme and posters.

Including all presenters, chairpersons and respondents, the total number of researchers exchanging ideas and perspectives across the social sciences, design, engineering, and community development, reached 179, from 92 institutions and 27 countries around the world. Participants commented on the convivial and non-hierarchical atmosphere which it generated across UCL’s diverse ecology of spaces, even if the multitude of parallel events and intensity of the timetable presented a challenge to taking in more than a fraction of what the conference offered across the many themes incorporated in the programme as a whole.

Find out more: ucl.ac.uk/urban-lab/events/2019/nov/frontiers-urban-thinking-concepts-and-practices-globally