One of GUHP’s responses to the COVID-19 pandemic was to establish a mentorship program for graduate students and junior scholars, to help ensure that they had an intellectual community and a space to present works-in-progress during the global health crisis. The mentorship program ran during the 2020-2021 and 2021-2022 academic years, with a culminating “GUHP Emerging” symposia. In 2022-2023, the mentorship program was reconceived as the GUHP Emerging Scholars Program.
GUHP Emerging Scholars 2024-25
The Global Urban History Project is proud to announce the 2024-25 cohort of GUHP Emerging Scholars. These eighteen scholars will work with senior members of GUHP’s Board and GUHP Emerging alumni to polish papers they plan to deliver at GUHP2 Berlin in July 10-11, 2025. Look out for announcements of other public events involving these scholars in advance of the conference.
Guidelines for Applications to GUHP Emerging 2024-25
Eligibility: Applicants to GUHP2 Berlin who are graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and independent scholars, adjunct faculty or tenure track faculty up to three years past their doctoral degree.
Why apply: Successful applicants will receive individual feedback on their conference proposal from a senior member of GUHP and will be invited to rehearse their presentation in a private online event in advance of the conference. In addition, they will be honored alongside other GUHP Emerging Scholars attendees at a special ceremony in Berlin.
Application: In addition to applying for participation in the conference – either as a panel member or as an individual presenter – applicants should submit a short cover letter declaring their interest in this program. The cover letter should include the name and contact information of the PhD advisor or another scholar who knows the work well.
Deadline: Applications are due to guhp@globalurbanhistory.org by the conference application deadline of Friday October 18 at 24:00 UTC.
“Ground-ing Buenos Aires. An urban history of land, soil, and ground”
Anastasia Betsa, PhD student, Research assist. Leibniz Institute for Research on Society and Space
“Between the Vernacular and the Global: Architecture, Retail, and the Postmodernization of Urban Space in Late Socialism, 1970-1990”
Ivana Mihaela Žimbrek, PhD student, Central European University, Vienna
“The Sugar Gamble: Finance, Ecology, and Empire in Egypt’s Sugar Belt, 1890-1914”
Salma Abouelhossein, PhD student, Harvard University
“A Landscape of Speculation: Traders, Landlords and Urban Land in the Making of a Frontier Town of the British Empire, Guwahati, 1860s-1900s”
Himalaya Bora, PhD student, Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati
“Long nineteenth century Tunis and its first railway: A spatial analysis of the TGM (Tunis-Goulette-Marsa)”
Oumaïma Jaïdane, MA in history of architecture from Middle East Technical University (Ankara)
“Forever prime real estate? A global, long-durée history of Lebanon’s Political Economy of Urban Space, 1920-1975”
Jan Altaner, PhD student, History, St. John’s College, University of Cambridge
“Going beyond the urban edge: how sweet potatoes supported an indigenous village amid urban sprawl, 1935-2016”
Tania Knapp da Silva, PhD student, University of São Paulo
“Singapore’s Laboured ‘Green’ Landscapes and Contested Visions of ‘Sustainability’ in the Plantationocene”
Yannis-Adam Allouache, Ph.D., the National University of Singapore
“Old Wine in New Bottle? The Emergence of Neoliberal Colombo (Sri Lanka) and Refashioning of Traditional Labour”
Aruna Jayasena, PhD student, South Asian University
“Memories of disaster induced urban dispossesion: Gendered Experiences of Disaster Relocation and Urban Vulnerability in Chennai”
Suchismita Goswami, PhD fellow, University of Copenhagen
“Viewing Urban History through Informality: Metropolitan Manila’s Informal Settlements during the Marcos Sr. Period, 1965-1986”
Gabriel Gagno, M.A. and instructor, the University of the Philippines
“Urbanizing Peace: Coen Beeker in Sudan and Ethiopia in the 1970s”
Chen Chu, PhD student, MIT
“Colonizing the Future: Urban Imaginations and the Transnational Flow of Techno-Utopia”
Maxim Tvorun-Dunn, PhD student, University of Tokyo
“Crane-Built Socialist Cities: Industrialization, Mechanization, and Lifting Construction in the Early PRC’s Urbanization”
Jie Shen, PhD student, University of Tokyo
“Transformation of Istanbul’s Seashores: Relationship of State and Entrepreneurs in Urban Change of 1940s-1950s Turkey”
Deniz Can Keskin, MA student, Freie Universität and Humboldt-Universität
“Urban everyday conflict in the streets of Madrid during the interwar period: defining the boundaries of public space”
Pablo de Mora, PhD student, Universidad Complutense de Madrid
““But the ‘Door’ Won’t Open”: Emotions as Method in Writing Urban Histories”
Hatem Hegab, PhD student, Freie Universität
“German villages in a German city: Marking the presence of German migrants from former Habsburg crownlands in interwar Vienna”
Pauli Aro, postdoctoral fellow, University of Vienna
GUHP Essay Prizes for Emerging Scholars
Up to three GUHP Essay Prizes will be awarded to early-career scholars for unpublished essays associated with graduate and post-graduate work in the field of Global Urban History. Eligible applicants should be GUHP members and can include graduate students, post-graduate scholars not in a tenure-track position, or early career scholars in the first three years of a tenure track position at the time of submission. Scholars who work at institutions in Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia are especially encouraged to apply, as are scholars who work on periods before 1850.
Essays must be no longer than 8,000 words in English inclusive of citations, be based on original research, contain full citations to archival and relevant secondary sources, and engage with critical themes in global urban history. Essay topics can include studies of cities as creations and creators of larger-scale historical phenomena of all kinds – from empires and capitalism to global cultural communities and ecosystems; of connective, cross-border, ocean-, river- or borderland urban history; of comparative or connective urban histories; of urban environmental history; and/or studies that in general expand historical research to cities and urban regions that are underrepresented in the current urban historical literature.
The Prize Committee will use the following criteria for evaluating essays for the essay prizes and any honorable mention the committee sees fit to award: clarity and strength of the argument, significance, originality, use of evidence, and depth of engagement with critical themes in global urban history.
Winners will be announced on the GUHP website, in Noteworthy in Global Urban History, on the Global Urban History blog, and on social media. Each winner will receive a monetary award of US$100 and a certificate. Winners are highly encouraged to submit their essays for publication in an urban history journal.
Application instructions for the next award cycle will be circulated in fall 2024.
2023 Essay Award Winners
GUHP Emerging Scholars Program 2022-2023
Deepasri Baul (Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Mohali): “The Sacredness of Urban Property: Entitlement and Ownership in the Rakabganj Gurdwara Protests in Delhi”
Sohini Chattopadhyay (Columbia University): “Manoobai in Life and Death: The Urban World of a Dead Body as an Anatomical Subject”
Milo Gough (University of Strathclyde): “Making Freetown: Infrastructures of an Emerging Colonial Urbanity”
Maarten Jonker (London School of Economics): “Petty Imperialism: Dutch expatriate communities and colonial ‘Dutchness’ in Asian port cities, 1919-1941”
Anwesha Ghosh (National Law School of India University, Bangalore): “Municipal Calcutta: Economic Life in a Colonial City”
Ankur Parashar (IISER Mohali): “Infrastructural Citizenship in colonial Shimla”
Ümit Acikgoz (American University of Beirut): “Global Locality, National Modernity: Negotiating Urban Transformation in Early Republican Istanbul (1923-1949)”
Yasmina El-Chami (University of Sheffield): “Collective Colonialism: Missionary Competition and the Project of the City in Ottoman Lebanon”
Mikkel Høghøj (The National Museum of Denmark): “Exporting Everyday Life: Danish construction companies as global urban actors after 1945”
Alfonso Fierro (Kenyon College): “Centralizing Plans, Regional Networks: Urban Periodicals and Networked Infrastructures in the Mexican 1920s”
Yuri Gama (University of Massachusetts Amherst): “Tropical Housing in a Cold War: Urban Planning, Politics, and Citizenship in Northeast Brazil”
Katie Carline (Michigan State University): “Unmaking and Remaking Spiritual Homes in an Apartheid City, 1963-1983”
Isaac Hand (NYU): “The Virtuous City: Utopian Urbanism in the early Turkish Republic”
Andrew Klein (UCLA): “Seize the Port: The Black Panther Party and the Struggle over Globalization in 1970s Oakland”
Lisa Ng (UC Berkeley): “The Revolution Will (Not) Be Trash(ed): Social Movements, Waste, and Urban Modernity under Late Capitalism”
Past symposia
Check out our past symposia organized with GUHP Emerging cohorts of the last few years.