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mattthompson.bsky.social
Matt Thompson
@mattthompson.bsky.social
1.6K followers 1.6K following 94 posts
• full-time urban geographer (UCL Bartlett)
• spare-time cyclejographer (London mostly)
• first-time author (*Reconstructing Public Housing: Liverpool’s hidden history of collective alternatives* https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv153k6cx
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mattthompson.bsky.social
The Country and the City, by Raymond Williams
November 5, 2025 at 8:20 AM
mattthompson.bsky.social
New paper on 'metabolic municipalism' in Barcelona, presenting Yousaf Nishat-Botero's PhD research in the city

Recently published in @societyandspace.bsky.social here: journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....

A kind of urban-rural synthesis of our ongoing work together on ecological economic planning…
August 31, 2025 at 9:28 AM
mattthompson.bsky.social
Still a few weeks left to submit something to this exciting (!) call for a special issue on conjunctural analysis

if you're thinking about the conjuncture, what to do about it politically, and how to write about it strategically and conceptually, we'd love to hear from you!
@colinlorne.bsky.social
From climate breakdown and settler-colonial genocide to economic turmoil and the culture wars, all kinds of crises are reshaping the political terrain as we know it. As contradictions sharpen and antagonisms intensify, there has been a remarkable resurgence in conjunctural analysis across geography, urban studies and well beyond. With multiple crises intersecting, the potential—and the challenge—of thinking conjuncturally lies in articulating precisely how diverse forces, relations, tensions, and contradictions condense in the present and condition the terrain of the politically possible. This presents a profoundly spatial as well as historical challenge. In this special issue, we invite researchers, theorists, critics, practitioners, activists and others engaged with different modes of conjunctural thinking to ask: what’s at stake in this conjuncture? How might we interpret everything that’s going on? Where, exactly, should we be looking? And what might be done about it? Informed by quite different intellectual traditions, political currents and social movements, our hope is to make space for critical dialogue attempting to get to grips with this conjuncture, thinking with and across particular places, scales, moments, and movements wherever that might lead us—whether that be critical insights into shifting socio-spatial configurations, promising new methodological avenues, or emerging political possibilities energising the kinds of social change so urgently needed. Amidst deepening neoliberal assault on academia, the continuing commodification and fragmentation of knowledge production under capitalism, and rising revanchist populisms threatening intellectual autonomy and political freedoms, this conjuncture demands collective strategic responses that can bridge such divides. As a growing body of diverse approaches to critique that share a relational, expansive, reflexive, synthetic and action orientation, conjunctural analysis presents a promising avenue for critical thinking in times of crisis. Yet how to translate the emergence of all these different conjunctural approaches and methods into political praxis? How might we narrate this formation and consolidate such diverse energies into practical strategies for tackling the divisions and dangers that define the present conjuncture? The special issue therefore aims to take stock of the recent resurgence in conjunctural thinking. What’s new or distinctive about this conjuncture compared to previous historical peaks of interest in conjunctural thinking—from Gramsci’s analysis of the crisis of liberalism and the rise of fascism in Italy in the 1920s and 1930s, and Stuart Hall’s reading of ascendant authoritarian populism and neoliberalism in Britain of the 1970s and 1980s, to rising nationalist revanchisms the world over today? What can be translated from those moments and places to make sense of our present troubles? What lessons might be learnt from elsewhere (and other times) in search of new political openings? How might (historical and spatial) comparison – and the comparative imagination – dovetail with conjunctural thinking? And how might we rethink the spaces and scales of conjunctural analysis to better interpret the multiple geographies of crisis now taking hold? Grappling with this conjuncture is not something that could ever be undertaken alone. There really is no one vantage point onto the troubles of the present that will reveal all the necessary answers. And yet to talk about how ‘we’ might respond—politically, analytically, methodologically—demands rejecting prevailing, and deeply uneven, tendencies within the worlds of criticism and academia which undermine generous, comradely and collective scholarship. Our hope is to resist pressures to fight it out for a ‘definitive’ mode of conjunctural analysis by instead encouraging a space, however modest, for critical dialogue that grapples with complexity and contradiction in attempts to articulate urgent alternatives. Contributions might take different forms or formats. It is anticipated that a geography/urban studies journal will be approached for the Special Issue, but of course this will depend on the expressions of interest we receive. Rather than providing a list of potential themes or issues, we instead encourage getting in touch if this sounds like the kind of conversation you want to be part of. In which case, please contact Colin Lorne (colin.lorne@open.ac.uk) and Matt Thompson (matt.thompson@ucl.ac.uk) before August 15th 2025 with a brief abstract/summary that offers a sense of what you are seeking to write about. Any questions, thoughts or suggestions, please do get in touch with us both.
August 4, 2025 at 9:58 AM
mattthompson.bsky.social
*call for papers* for a special issue on 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘫𝘶𝘯𝘤𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘦

Edited by me and @colinlorne.bsky.social in a geography or urban studies journal yet to be decided

If you're interested in writing about conjunctural thinking and the conjuncture, in any domain or discipline, we'd love to hear from you!
June 23, 2025 at 12:08 PM
mattthompson.bsky.social
In 2017, Zagreb je Naš! (Zagreb is Ours!) launched their municipalist party platform on this overspilling landfill site with a promise to transform the city left to rot by the previous corrupt regime. This was conjunctural thinking in action. Read all about the struggle for Zagreb in our new paper 👇
In 2017, the future mayor of Zagreb, Tomislav Tomašević, surmounted the city’s notoriously overspilling waste landfill site, stuck his new municipalist party’s flag into the summit and proclaimed: ‘the battle for Zagreb begins on this hill!’ This iconic moment in Zagreb’s recent history marked the launch of Zagreb je Naš! (ZjN, ‘Zagreb is Ours!’) and the beginning of the conjunctural turning point between two periods and ideologies of rule: the two-decade-long reign of Milan Bandić, a corrupt, clientelist, populist, crony-capitalist mayor, and the incoming eco-socialist, citizen-led and transparency-championing municipalist movement represented by ZjN and led by left-green activists such as Tomašević.
January 20, 2025 at 7:45 AM
mattthompson.bsky.social
Drawing on Peter D Thomas’ Gramscian analysis of the four Aristotelian causes of radical politics, the paper argues the purpose of conjunctural analysis can be understood through its four causes: hegemony (final cause), crisis (material cause), articulation (efficient cause), praxis (formal cause)…
January 19, 2025 at 12:38 PM
mattthompson.bsky.social
New paper on conjunctural analysis and radical municipalism and their affinities as two political methods for intervening in the conjuncture

Written w/ @paul-stubbs.bsky.social, @colinlorne.bsky.social and co.

Just published open access in Environment & Planning F:
doi.org/10.1177/2634...

🧵
January 19, 2025 at 12:38 PM
mattthompson.bsky.social
The brightest and most brilliant of the dark days of deep winter
Sunlight shining through trees lining icy valley Snowy field marked by tracks leading to country house Frozen pond reflecting sunlight and encompassing tree roots Burnt light of sunset hitting silver birch woodlands
January 11, 2025 at 5:02 PM
mattthompson.bsky.social
Through what kind of spaces might postcapitalist planning emerge? How will the process of wresting collective control over the relations of production and reproduction, and over our metabolic exchange with the rest of nature, unfold through struggle?

journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
December 3, 2024 at 8:43 AM
mattthompson.bsky.social
I refuse to join Bluesky. I want no part in your art deco chamber.
an art deco chamber in Hackney Town Hall, London
November 19, 2024 at 9:17 AM
mattthompson.bsky.social
Call for papers: RGS/IBG 2024📢

Mapping crises and conjunctures

Organised by @colinlorne.bsky.social and myself

Deadline for abstracts: 23rd February
January 29, 2024 at 3:08 PM