[Talk] @Georg Simmel Center for Urban Studies

🗓 Monday, May 12, 2025 | 🕕 18:00 | 📍 GSZ, Humboldt University Berlin — Think & Drink Series

I'm delighted to be giving a talk at the Think & Drink lecture series at Humboldt University Berlin. In this talk, I’ll share insights from my recent research in Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC), where I explored how urban flood resilience is shaped—not just by climate data or technical plans, but by complex layers of politics, history, and everyday material interactions.

Title: Shifting Tides: Controversies and Material Realities Along Vietnam's Urban Flooding Problem

Using HCMC as a case study, I look at how visions for urban futures are co-produced by planners, engineers, local residents, and even non-human actors like water hyacinths or the city's colonial-era sewage system. These entanglements reveal what I call “knowledge controversies”: moments where different forms of expertise, power, and value collide.

I'll reflect on how global climate adaptation policies intersect with local constraints and histories, and how legitimacy around expert knowledge is constantly being negotiated in this post-communist context. Who gets to define the problem? Whose data is trusted? And what happens when the city starts to sink?

I'm very much looking forward to the discussion — and, of course, to a drink afterward. If you’re in Berlin, I’d love to see you there!

More information can be found here.