This research project involves the international comparison of different capital cities to study the place and role of political power and global urban governance in the creation, making and development of capital cities as well as the impacts of grassroots claims and demands about urban and environmental design on these political processes. The following questions will constitute the core of our interrogation: how are the national imaginaries of capital cities forged by the spatial configuration of political symbols? What are the conflictual and/or consensual relationships between different political actors in the conception of capital cities? To what extent could the nature of the political regime have an important impact on this conception with regard to the highly competitive context of planetary urbanization? What are the specific socio-political and economic flows among these countries and how do they in turn influence capital city building? Finally, how is it possible to tackle the interactions between urban design policies and multiple societal and environmental advocacy programs, considering the growing importance of urban democracy in many countries and international agendas? Our main objective is to study, in a comparative manner, the production of capital cities according to three different but interconnected research themes: 1- The spatial imagination and conception of capital cities by national political power, as a symbolic struggle of different political visions. 2- The influence of global urban networks and the circulation of international models in urban development and urban space. 3- The reciprocal impact between urbanisation policies in capital cities and various demands and protests from divergent actors concerning urban spaces and the environment. In order to study these questions, we propose the cases of Ankara, Moscow, Tehran, Abu Dhabi, Nur-Sultan and Cairo. Our choice to focus on these capitals comes from the fact that the countries in which they are located are often present in the studies of international relations in terms of geopolitics, state and diplomatic relations but less in urban studies. The cities of the project are deliberately chosen as being situated in states perceived among an international community as relatively illiberal and non-democratic. We are interested in analysing how authoritarian governments express themselves spatially in the city. The existing scientific literature on this topic has focused primarily on the fixed staging of illiberal political power in political geography and geopolitics, and less has been said on the dynamics between the political regime and city design as well as the lived and perceived spaces in these cities. The main contribution of the project will be the realisation of an international comparison of cities including their diversity, particularities, and also their shared strategies. What interests us is to observe if they are affected by similar political and symbolic processes among various actors, have similar strategies of integration in global urbanism and use similar tools in urban space in order to reflect an image of a strong state at the international level despite their diverse histories, settings and cultures. The major ambition of the project is to delve into unexplored fields/areas of urban studies. We will link our research themes through multiple threads that will follow state actors at both national and local levels, inhabitants in their lived and conceived spaces, urban activist networks and civil society. We will focus on political decision-making places of urbanism as well as on the historical and symbolic development of cities. We will bring together different methods and tools and will use especially filmmaking and photography for each stage of the work, not only as a research method but also as a storytelling medium.

The project aims to study the ongoing multidimensional changes in revolutionary Sudan within a dynamic context of (practical and conceptual) production of social alternative models inspired by a shared and multiform quest for equality and justice. Its methodology is based on intensive ethnographies, research training, participatory dimension with civil society’s actors. Grounded in the research on contemporary Sudan, an interdisciplinary team (anthropology, sociology, geography, political science, history, linguistics, law) benefits from an international consortium, as French institutions (LAVUE, PRODIG) work in synergy with 2 institutions in the country of inquiry (University of Khartoum and CEDEJ). The project’s is original at different scales : the specific Sudanese case study, the regional frame of an Arab-Muslim area whose scientific interest is enhanced by the recent international conjuncture, a wider comparative reflection on socio-political protest movements in contemporary world. At the theoretical level, the case of the Third Sudanese Revolution started in 2018, is chosen as a laboratory for a grounded theory which, first, nourishes recent approaches on inequalities and discriminations, and, second, challenges the encounter between two sides of the debate on decolonisation (the one on new imperialism and the “recolonization” of the Global South and the other on “decoloniality” looking at the intersection of race, gender, ethnicity, autochthony). The project team work by means of a twofold organisation, with the aim of crossing various empirical and analytical dimensions and merging academic approach, research training and coproduction. An articulation into 3 Transversal Issues (Gender, Environment, Citizenship) intermingles with a structure in 3 Task Forces (Socio-environmental injustices and commons rebuilding; Reshaping political arenas through inclusive citizenship; Cultural circulations, memories, imaginations). The team will be involved in three main activities: personal fieldworks (rural and urban); a Doctoral School on inequalities in situations of radical change; Workshops of knowledge co-production with civil society’s actors. The elaboration of a Participatory Digital Platform “Landscapes of the Sudanese Revolution” with 2 focuses (Mapping and Dictionary) is both a tool and a product of the project. The main team is formed by 9 researchers (6 senior and 3 PhDs) with solid experience of fieldwork in Sudan and other Middle East or African contexts. They work in coordination with 8 researchers of the University of Khartoum and will integrate members of 5 selected Sudanese civil society associations. A joint coordination is led by two researchers (Anthropologist and Geographer) with a strong background in scientific and pedagogic collaboration with Sudanese academic institutions and international partners. The deliverables of the project are: a collective volume (French, English, Arabic); an International Conference for the diffusion of scientific results; the creation of a French-Sudanese training pole extending the Doctoral School’s experience; the open access to the Digital Platform as an innovative tool for knowledge transmission; the elaboration of a Horizon Europe project on Inequalities, Revolutions and Fairer Futures. Its scientific impacts will be the contribution to debates on socio-spatial and environmental inequalities and injustices, and on socio-political protest movements in a global world, together with a reflection on theory/fieldwork dialectics. At the societal level impacts will concern the understanding of forms and imaginations for rethinking “fairer futures”, and of patterns “from below” for coping with inequalities and injustices to face governance, ecological and migration crises, together with the bridging of the gap between academic, civil and democratic training.