In Conversation with Ida Danewid

What can the Grenfell Tower fire in London 2017 teach us about the racialized structure of the cities we live in? What are the implications of understanding the violence of neoliberal urbanism for the study of global cities in IR? In ‘The Fire This Time: Grenfell, Racial Capitalism and the Urbanisation of Empire’, Ida Danewid (Sussex), award-winner of the 2020 EISA Best Article in the European Journal of International Relations award, argues that the IR literature on global cities has largely neglected questions of race and racism. In this conversation with Maj Grasten (Copenhagen Business School), Ida Danewid discusses how her contribution connects urban studies and IPE with post- and decolonial, black and indigenous studies, and how we must situate our understanding of global cities in a much wider cartography of imperial and racial violence.