Keynote - Dr Wangui Kimari

04/03/25 • 35 min

In today's Keynote episode, we meet the wonderful Dr Wangui Kimari. Wangui is Assistant Director at the American University Nairobi Abroad Program and she is an Honorary Research Associate at the African Centre for Cities at the University of Cape Town. We had a fantastic time learning from Wangui about The DNA of Nairobi, Kenya’s capital city, and she also enlightened us about her starting points for understanding the uniqueness of cities as an urban anthropologist.

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Here are a selection of Wangui's recent publications:

Kimari, W. (2024) On the police as infrastructure and managers in the African city. (Link)
Pfingst, A. and Kimari, W. (2021) Carcerality and the legacies of settler colonial punishment in Nairobi. (Link)
Kimari, W. (2020) War-talk: an urban youth language of siege in Nairobi. (Link)
Kimari, W., Melchiorre, L. & Rasmussen, J. (2020) Youth, the Kenyan state and a politics of contestation. (Link)

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What are the Keynotes? These are the episodes where we zoom out from our city-to-city voyage to meet global expert voices from a range of different disciplinary vantage points (e.g. from history, to theology, to genetics, to archaeology, to design) to understand the place of cities in their work. We want to know how they would approach and investigate the relationship between cities and human experience and evolution.

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Bass Vibes - Rollin at 5 by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Source: http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/index.html?isrc=USUAN1100462

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Sound design by Josh Latham.

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Here are a selection of Wangui's recent publications:

Kimari, W. (2024) On the police as infrastructure and managers in the African city. (Link)
Pfingst, A. and Kimari, W. (2021) Carcerality and the legacies of settler colonial punishment in Nairobi. (Link)
Kimari, W. (2020) War-talk: an urban youth language of siege in Nairobi. (Link)
Kimari, W., Melchiorre, L. & Rasmussen, J. (2020) Youth, the Kenyan state and a politics of contestation. (Link)

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Bass Vibes - Rollin at 5 by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Source: http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/index.html?isrc=USUAN1100462

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Sound design by Josh Latham.

Previous Episode

The DNA of Sydney - Part III

Welcome to the final episode in our mini-series exploring The DNA of Sydney. This is the episode where we attempt to understand identity, mindsets and social behaviours in Sydney and where we might look in the city’s history and evolution to find earliest signs of these traits or characteristics and how they became continuous.

Although this is the final part of our mini-series, we know that there is so much more that we could attempt to decode in Sydney’s complex psyche – and we also know that there is no single truth waiting to be discovered. These conversations represent a contribution to discussions that have long been underway in Sydney about identity, character, perception and evolution.

This mini-series has been almost five years in the making and was really only possible because of the generousity of our local experts. We wish to thank Monica Barone, Dr Sarah Hill, Dr Danièle Hromek, Lyn Lewis-Smith, Alex O’Mara, Professor Peter Read AM, Michael Rose AM, Rob Stokes and Eamon Waterford for joining us to decode The DNA of Sydney over these three episodes.

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Bass Vibes - Rollin at 5 by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Source: http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/index.html?isrc=USUAN1100462

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Sound design by Dainius Kacinskas.

Next Episode

Keynote - Gonzalo Brujó

In today's Keynote episode, we are joined by Gonzalo Brujó. Gonzalo is Global CEO at Interbrand where he leads the day-to-day operations of the global brand consultancy, spearheading the growth agenda and supporting marketing and consulting efforts in all regions. We spoke to Gonzalo about how he decodes the uniqueness of cities and how a sense of place shapes branding strategy and activation. He also reveals how city branding compares to national branding or corporate branding.

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Bass Vibes - Rollin at 5 by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Source: http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/index.html?isrc=USUAN1100462

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Sound design by Josh Latham.