Unfolding Our Shared Future: Challenge, Possibility and Potential in the 21st Century: Keele University, 8 May 2024, 16.30 – 18.30 UK time

Co-hosted by the American Politics Group and the David Bruce Centre for the Study of the Americas

“Unfolding our Shared Future” is a travelling festival which addresses issues affecting the US and UK in domestic, trans-Atlantic and global contexts. The theme for Keele’s event is “Urban Regeneration,” and we are pleased to welcome two internationally-renowned researchers in the field – Professor Loretta Lees (Boston) and Professor Ray Bromley (Emeritus, Albany).

Loretta Lees has worked in New Zealand, Canada and the UK (at King’s College, and Leicester), and is one of the world’s leading urban geographers and a committed scholar-activist. She has published 17 books and 77 journal articles and has been a key driver of research into “planetary gentrification,” exploring gentrification around the globe in spaces other than New York and London. She was awarded the 2022 Marilyn J. Gittell Activist Scholar Award by the Urban Affairs Association for her work with low-income, marginalized communities fighting gentrification and displacement.

Ray Bromley served from 1981-85 as Advisor on Regional Planning to the Peruvian Prime Minister’s Office, sponsored by USAID, and in 1985 he accepted a Professorship in Albany. At SUNY-Albany he served for five years as Chair of Geography and Planning, and for almost a decade as Vice Provost for International Education. He has held Visiting Fulbright Professorships in Peru (1997) and India (2016). Ray’s research has focused on national, regional and urban planning, on informality, casual work and self-help housing, and on the 20th century history of ideas in urban studies and planning. He is a fluent Spanish speaker with nine years of field experience in Latin America, and he has travelled widely in other world areas.

Professor Lees and Professor Bromley will present papers on the theme of urban regeneration and there will be a Q and A session afterwards, chaired by the Director of the David Bruce Centre, James Peacock.

The event is free, and registration for the live streaming can be found here.