Counter-Topographies of Care: Feminist Geographies, Migrant Infrastructures, and Political Subjectification

Location: Sala Montseny (Z/022 - Z/023) ICTA-UAB and online | Map
Language: English

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Seminar: "Counter-Topographies of Care: Feminist Geographies, Migrant Infrastructures, and Political Subjectification", by Matina Kapsali

Matina Kapsali, postdoc researcher at the Department of Geography, University of Manchester, will visit ICTA-UAB to give a seminar. It will be possible to follow the seminar online.

Title: “Counter-Topographies of Care: Feminist Geographies, Migrant Infrastructures, and Political Subjectification”.

Speaker: Matina Kapsali, postdoc researcher at the Department of Geography, University of Manchester.

In this talk, Matina Kapsali investigates the political and spatial dynamics of grassroots, feminist-oriented infrastructures emerging within migrant communities. Drawing on ethnographic engagement with migrant communities in Greece and the UK, and grounded in an engaged, participatory research praxis, she foregrounds how relational, embodied, and affective practices craft alternative infrastructures of solidarity and belonging. Informed by feminist geography’s emphasis on care, embodiment, and infrastructure-as-lived, she examines how self-organized spaces become terrains for political subjectification across difference. Matina also reflects on the methodological and ethical dimensions of an engaged feminist participatory approach rooted in co-creation and situated knowledges. The research is funded by the Urban Studies Found.

Matina Kapsali is a scholar-activist and a feminist urban geographer, currently a postdoc researcher at the Department of Geography, University of Manchester. Her work spans Architecture, Urban Planning, Geography, and Urban Studies exploring the political dimensions of urban space and how cities can be reimagined as critical terrains of politicisation. She experiments with innovative, engaged methodologies grounded in feminist and participatory practices, building long-term, embedded relationships with the communities she collaborates with. Matina holds a PhD in Geography and Planning from Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (AUTh) and an MSc from the University of Manchester. Her research focuses on social reproduction, migration and the city, political movements, and public space.

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Our USF grant provided the platform for a major programme of research on family homelessness, debt and temporary accommodation in the UK, culminating in the 2025 co-authored book Debt Trap Nation: Family Homelessness in a Failing State. The grant generated more than £550,000 in subsequent research funding and grew new and now enduring partnerships with Shared Health Foundation, the Chartered Institute of Housing, Garden Court Chambers and the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Households in Temporary Accommodation. The research has had significant policy impact. It directly informed the UK Government's National Plan to End Homelessness (2025) and underpinned a proposed amendment to the Social Housing Bill currently before the House of Lords (June 2026), with the potential to change primary legislation affecting survivors of domestic abuse facing housing-related debt.

Navigating debt-trap urbanism in pandemic times: family homelessness and temporary accommodation in Greater Manchester, Pandemics and Cities

Urban Studies Foundation is a registered Scottish charity. Registration number SC039937.

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