“If you can show how GIS is programmed, you can show how power is programmed spatially.” (Maher, 2021)
The purpose of this research is to investigate how power is spatially programmed in our cities through a critical spatial justice perspective and the misuse and co-opting of geospatial technologies. My research focuses on the socio-technical implications of geospatial technologies, specifically attentive to how this constructs gendered identities, sexual orientation, and the body's geographies across multiple axes of difference.
Spatial justice is a concept and approach that was first deployed in critical geography. It aims to unite the body's materiality with space — in the geographical, sociological and philosophical sense — and departs from movement as a crucial factor that generates a ‘lawscape.' This is understood through written and oral law but also through embodied and political norms (Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos, 2015). Geospatial technologies operate on and mediate three main elements of spatial justice: body, space and movement.
The research is linked to the themes and insights developed in "A Glitch in the System" and "Infrastructures for Objection and Participation," activated in collaboration with Roberto Pérez Gayo and expands upon my engagement with a critical spatial practice that analyses systems of representation and orientation.
Spatial Justice Imaginaries develops over the course of four years as part of my PhD research trajectory with the University of Amsterdam (ASCA)