Seminar Series

From short-term rentals to digital dashboards, in the last decade, scholars have charted the wide-ranging impacts of platforms and platformization processes in contemporary society. While this is a global phenomenon, platformization takes different forms - and has different stakes - across urban geographies. At the time, the definition of platforms has differed in different disciplines, for example, between media studies, mainstream economics, heterodox economics, and cultural studies. In this session, the panel will explore some of these differences in both contexts and debates, to make connections and flag disjunctures. Moderator: Nancy Odendaal is the current Basel Chair of Urban Studies at the African Centre for Cities. She has published extensively on smart urbanisms and everyday livelihoods, with her book, Disrupted Urbanism: Situated Smart Initiatives in African Cities, published in 2023 by Bristol University Press, examining the spatial changes that can emanate from endogenous platform initiatives. Panelists: Alicia Fortuin is a PhD candidate and researcher at the African Centre for Cities, University of Cape Town. Her PhD examines youth, work, and inequality in Cape Town, while her broader research has engaged public space, digital platforms in ride-hailing and delivery platforms in the African context. Her research is interested in work and its changing forms, intersecting with technology, governance, care and socio-spatial transformation in unequal cities. Marc Steinberg is Professor of Cinema and director of The Platform Lab at Concordia University, Montréal. He researches the impacts of digital platforms on management practices, media industries, and cultural life in East Asia. He is the author ofThe Platform Economy: How Japan Transformed the Commercial Internet (University of Minnesota Press, 2019) and Media and Management (2021), among other books, and has recently co-edited In/Convenience: Inhabiting the Logistical Surround(Institute of Network Cultures, 2024). Ananya is a PhD student in the Film & Moving Image studies program at Concordia University. Her current research examines how digital platforms are attaching themselves to everyday urban life in India. She focuses in particular on the gendered interface between youth culture, gig labour, the creator economy, and platformed domesticities. Her proposed dissertation project studies the digital infolding of the city and its aspirational horizons. Armin Beverungen is Profess for the Sociology of Organisation and Economy and affiliated with the Centre for Digital Cultures at Leuphana University Lüneburg. He recently completed a 4-year research project on logistical platform urbanism and currently researches digital (urban and port) twins and their promises of wealth and co-leads a research initiative on climate futures in digital cultures. DETAILS: DATE | Wednesday, 25 February 2026 TIME | 13H00 - 14H30 VENUE | Seminar 1, Environmental and Geographical Science Building, UCT Upper Campus. Please RSVP to africancentreforcities@uct.ac.za