The AHRC Network will run through four meetings hosted by the network partners in India, Brazil and UK. The network workshops will have an open and discursive ethos. A broad spectrum of disciplinary backgrounds will be involved in the wider network; from Geography, Urban Studies, Computer Science, Urban Planning, Communication, Urban Sociology and Politics. The participation of academics from different continents will also enable original knowledge exchange both across country boundaries and disciplinary boundaries.

The concluding symposium event will take place in Plymouth; comprising of an open to all session with presentation from the investigators of all partner universities and of other related work. Guest speakers will also be invited from local governance and community groups to represent stakeholder interests. This will close with an open forum session to determine crosscutting similarities and differences between the different forms of marginalisation discussed along the partnership, possible guidelines for further research and case studies.
The workshop formats will be as follows:

Workshop 1: India
June 2016
‘Smart Citizenship’
Venue/host: CAG, Chennai, India
The first workshop in Chennai, will focus on the topic of ‘Smart Citizenship’, and how ICT led developments need to involve not only engineers, coders or systems scientists – but also civic hacktivists, local associations and longstanding community groups that make up civic-cyber space (e.g. Sadoway, 2012, 2013). We will look at the role, not of ‘Big Data’, but of a process where interested publics are actively solicited to co-create potentially transformative civic ‘information’. The workshop will involve a small number of invited participants (academics and key stakeholders involved in local public sector or third sector initiatives) in addition to the PI, CI and members of the steering committee. The workshop will address material specific to the Indian context of local ‘smart city’ projects and associated ICT initiatives . The workshop objective will be to develop a shared understanding of what shape of ICT initiatives might be appropriate for marginalised communities in the Indian context. During the workshop we will make a site visit to a number of initiatives in Chennai.
Language: English and Tamil

Workshop 2: Brazil
December 2016
‘Autonomy in the smart city’
Venue/host: LAGEar lab, Federal University of Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, Brazil
Key Participants/Guests (not full list)

• José dos Santos Cabral Filho, LAGEAR, UfMG
• Silke Kapp, Urban Planning, UfMG
• Sérgio Martins, Geography, UFMG
• Invited academic speakers
• Glauco Bruce Rodrigues, Geography, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ)
• Marcos Dantas, Communication, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) (invited)
• Invited Non HE speakers
• Representative of the Federal Public Ministry (invited)
• Group History under Construction at Vila das Antenas, HGO, Belo Horizonte (invited)
• Organised Squatting groups (to be invited)

The second workshop will focus on the concept of ‘autonomy’ and the role that people can play in producing their own community using different ICTs. This will address the ‘potential of ICT for their autonomous actions on space: on collaboratively creating a space as they occupy it using digital technology’ (Baltazar 2010). The workshop will involve a small number of invited participants (academics and key stakeholders involved in local public sector or third sector initiatives) in addition to the PI, CI and network partners. The workshop will be preceded by pre-circulated papers from the Brazilian context to include: writings, examples and outcomes of local ‘smart city’ projects and associated ICT initiatives (via the website platform). The workshop objective will be to bring together different perspectives of the right to the city and converge them to the discussion of the cases studied and systematised prior to the workshop. This will inform the development of a shared understanding of different features that either constrain or empower communities to achieve their autonomy in the context of the Smart City in Brazil. During the workshop we will make a site visit a site visit to a particular initiative near Belo Horizonte (the town of Novo de Coeirdo).
Language: English and Portuguese

Workshop 3: London
Topic: Community engagement in the smart city
September 2016
Venue/host: Space Syntax Lab, UCL, London
Key Participants/Guests (not full list)

• Invited academic speakers
• Duncan Wilson, Intel Collaborative Research Institute Cities (ICRI Cities, UCL
• Alison Powell, Media and Communications, LSE (invited)
• Invited Non HE speakers
• Scott Cain, Chief Business Officer of Future Cities Catapult, Future Cities Catapult
• Yasmine Abbas, Panurban Intelligence, Paris

The third workshop will focus on the city itself, and how citizens within urban space engage with technologies embedded and moving within them. This involves the understanding how people might contribute to the design of a future urban space that reflects this changing engagement with a ‘smart’ city (Fatah &Penn 2013). The workshop will involve a small number of invited participants (academics and key stakeholders involved in local public sector or third sector initiatives) in addition to the PI, CI and members of the steering committee. The workshop will be preceded by pre-circulated papers from the UK context to include: writings, examples and outcomes of local ‘smart city’ projects and associated ICT initiatives (via the website platform). The workshop objective will be to develop a shared understanding of what ICT initiatives might be appropriate for marginalised communities in the UK, and particularly the London context. During the workshop we will make a site visit of a particular initiative in London (Wild Screens project in Walthamstow).
Language: English

Symposium
Topic: “Whose right to the (smart) city?
September 2016
Venue/host: School of Architecture, Design and Environment, Plymouth University, Plymouth, UK
Key Participants/Guests (not full list)

• Alessandro Aurigi, School of Architecture, Design and Environment (Plymouth University), UK
• Invited Academic speakers – TBC

The two-day symposium at Plymouth University will comprise of an open to all session with presentations from the investigators of all network partners as well as invited guests. The aim of the symposium will be to discuss the findings of the network and open this up to a wider audience of academics, early career researchers and representative from non HE sectors (governance and industry). The objective of the symposium will be to understand what initiatives address the particular needs of marginalised communities, and how these might enable a ‘right to the (smart) city”. It will include a session to determine crosscutting similarities and differences between the different forms of marginalisation discussed during the network workshops, and the identification of potential for further research.
Language: English (with summary sessions translated into Tamil and Portuguese)