Distinguished lecture: Professor Rob Kitchin

Abstract: This talk provides a critical reflection on the idea and ideals of the smart city. It considers a number of political and normative questions relating to ethics, governmentality, citizenship, sovereignty and social justice, and how these are conceived and operationalized within smart cities, illuminated through a number of empirical cases. The final part of the talk explores the notion of ‘the right to the smart city’ and how this might be used to recast the smart city for citizens in emancipatory and empowering ways.
 
Bio: Rob Kitchin is a professor at Maynooth University Social Sciences Institute and Department of Geography. He was a European Research Council Advanced Investigator on the Programmable City project (2013-2018) and a principal investigator on the Building City Dashboards project (2016-2020). He is the (co)author or (co)editor of 31 academic books and (co)author of over 200 articles and book chapters. He has been an editor of Dialogues in Human Geography, Progress in Human Geography and Social and Cultural Geography, and was the co-Editor-in-Chief of the International Encyclopedia of Human Geography. He was the 2013 recipient of the Royal Irish Academy’s Gold Medal for the Social Sciences.