I chair the hub Where do I belong, which is part of Dynamics of Youth, one of the four strategic themes of Utrecht University. In this hub, together with a team of researchers from Pedagogics, Law, Social Geography, Computer Sciences and Linguistics, I examine the daily underlying processes that affect the belonging of adolescents living in more than one home, such as after parental divorce. Many children grow up in divorced or blended families, in which the family members do not all share the same household. Frequently, questions arise about the psychological and ethical aspects surrounding these modern families. After all, our sense of belonging originates from the first relationships with our primary caregivers. But what happens when children grow up in multi-resident families, are not raised by both biological parents, or live in two different homes and neighbourhoods?

https://www.uu.nl/en/research/dynamics-of-youth/urban-geographer-irina-van-aalst

• prof. dr. Susan Branje
• prof. mr. Wendy Schrama
• dr. Inge van der Valk
• prof. dr. Aoju Chen
• dr. Zoë Rejaän

A transdisciplinary toolkit for mapping and analysing urgent issues around infrastructures in public spaces
In order to allow citizens to engage with, and work collaboratively toward, (more) sustainable urban futures, we need awareness of the infrastructures that co-shape our private and public lives, their interrelations, and one’s own participatory position within these networks. To enable this ‘infrastructural thinking’ and the co-creative processes around it, this project develops a transdisciplinary toolkit for creative urban methods. As a seed money project for the Tranforming Infrastructures for Sustainable Cities hub, we aim to create a robust methodology for research into (futures for) sustainable urban infrastructures through a productive exchange between the social sciences, geosciences and the humanities.

• Jente Hoogeveen MA
• prof. dr. Martijn Oosterbaan
• dr. Sigrid Merx
• prof. dr. Nanna Verhoeff

• prof. dr. Annelies Zoomers

Young people's language as a marker of group identity in multi ethnic encounters in an urban context.
Summary:
This research focuses on the complicated ways in which urban public spaces are used by groups of young people. Different groups claim territory and distinguish themselves from each other through their clothes or music, although we will be concentrating on the use of language and its relationship with ethnicity.
Data will be collected through interviews with and observations of members of various groups. By combining expertise from two different disciplines – sociolinguistics and urban geography – we hope to gain an understanding of how linguistics play a role in creating group identities in the context of public urban spaces

• dr. Jacomine Nortier

Widely considered to produce public order and safety for everybody, video-surveillance of public spaces has expanded rapidly in recent years. At the same time, certain popular and scientific discourses have foregrounded the downsides of video-surveillance - CCTV may e.g. exacerbate discrimination of certain social groups. This project interrogates such readings of video-surveillance through a constructivist and contextualized approach. Its central tenet holds that CCTV may channel or attract social groups to certain spaces; marginalize or profile social groups as risky or undesired; and/or exclude or control and restrict the presence and practices of social groups. Which socio-spatial effects become manifest in a given public space depends on the interactions of visitors, operators, CCTV technologies, public authorities and other involved actors. We concentrate on public spaces in/around nighttime entertainment districts, because the latter are important - if under-examined - assets in cities' attempts to attract affluent consumers and stimulate economic growth.