Miriam Williams

Senior Lecturer

Geography and Planning

Macquarie University

Australia

Degrees

PhD, University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia

Bachelor of Development Studies (Honours Class 1), University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia

Research Interests

I am an urban cultural geographer whose work focuses on care, justice, sustainability, diverse economies and commons in the city. In 2017 I commenced my current role at Macquarie University as a lecturer in Geography and Planning. As an emerging Urban Researcher I am interested in how urban life could be made more just and caring for people and planet. I am currently the coordinator of the Bachelor of Planning.

In 2013 I received my PhD from the University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia. This work was published in Antipode, Urban Studies, Area, Geographical Research and Cities. In June 2018 I was invited to present a Keynote at the Institute of Australian Geographers Urban Study Group Symposium on Cities of Care. This paper is now published in Cities. In 2018 my paper titled Care-full Justice in the City was released online by the Antipode Foundation as part of a curated collection connected to the Association of American Geographers Annual Antipode lecture.

My research explores everyday practices of justice and care in the city with a specific focus on community and urban commons. My current research focuses around five main areas:

Care-full Justice in the city
A Feminist Ethics of care and the politics and practices of care
Sustainability Practices
Food justice and community food initiatives
Diverse Economies, post-capitalist politics and commoning

Links

https://researchers.mq.edu.au/en/persons/miriam-williams

https://twitter.com/drmwilliams

Publications

Diverse infrastructures of care: community food provisioning in Sydney

There is burgeoning interest in the role of infrastructures as performative socio-technical systems that shape urban life. In this paper, we make visible an often-hidden and diverse infrastructure of care, the Community Food Provisioning Initiative (CFPI) sector. We discuss CFPIs as often hidden, yet vital infrastructures of care. Drawing on research on the CFPI sector in Sydney, Australia, we attend to the diverse ways in which CFPIs are governed, the materialities that constitute them and the diverse economic practices that support them. Our work makes visible the spatial extensiveness of CFPIs across the city, the ways in which caring practice is made possible by ‘things’, and the diverse enterprises, transactions, labour, property and finance that constitute the diverse economies of CFPIs. We couple our work developing a typology of community food provisioning, GIS mapping and an overview of the diverse economy of CFPIs with empirical examples from three CFPIs. Throughout the paper we highlight how CFPIs are diverse and vital infrastructures of care that contribute to people’s ability to survival well in the city.

The Possibility of Care-full Cities

In this paper I explore the possibility of the feminist ethic of care to enhance urban theory by placing emphasis upon our collective interdependence and responsibility to one another. As an ethics, care has the potential to maintain, continue, repair and transform our worlds. As a practice, care is often hidden from view despite the integral role care plays in ensuring survival in our worlds of both human and non-human others. As a performative act attuned to the possibility of care in the city I discuss how care was manifest in this space of care by drawing on research undertaken at The Women’s Library, Newtown which is located in Sydney, Australia. I reflect upon care-full practices that maintain, continue and repair our worlds within and beyond the library. Following this, I propose three ways we might continue to pay attention to/with care in urban theory. I argue that paying attention to/with care may assist us in understanding the role of maintenance and repair in creating more caring and just cities; emphasise our collective inter-dependence and responsibility for one another; and reveal silences, injustices and neglect in a way that provokes action.

Miriam Williams

Degrees

Research Interests

Links

Publications

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