AbdouMaliq Simone

Biography

AbdouMaliq Simone’s research is focused on the explorations of (non)human life in an era of extensive urbanisation; the incorporation of Black critical thought and Black internationalism into theories of urbanisation; and the infrastructures and politics of urban popular economies across different geographies.

Simone is Senior Professorial Fellow at the Urban Institute, University of Sheffield (2018–present); Visiting Professor of Urban Studies at the African Centre for Cities, University of Cape Town; and co-director of the Beyond Inhabitation Lab, Polytechnic University of Turin. Previously, he was Professor, Department of Socio-Cultural Diversity, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, Göttingen, Germany (2014–2018).

His publications include For the City Yet to Come: Urban Change in Four African Cities (Duke University Press, 2004); City Life from Jakarta to Dakar: Movements at the Crossroads (Routledge2009); Jakarta: Drawing the City Near (University of Minnesota Press, 2014); New Urban Worlds: Inhabiting Dissonant Times, Polity (with Edgar Pieterse, Polity, 2017); Improvised Lives: Rhythms of Endurance for an Urban South (Polity, 2018); and The Surrounds: Urban Life Within and Beyond Capture (Duke University Press, 2022).

Simone received a BA from Hampshire College, Amherst Massachusetts (1971) and a PhD in social-clinical psychology from The Wright Institute, California (1979).

Born in 1952 in Wisconsin, USA, he lives and works between London, Turin, Jakarta and Bangkok.

SAF participation:
March Meeting 2023