My name is Chiara Valli, I am an urban geographer interested in the social and political dimensions of urban restructuring and their impacts on social sustainability and urban (in)equality. Currently, I am a postdoc at the Institute for Urban Research at Malmö university. My research includes issues of housing financialisation, gentrification, segregation, labor and precarity, urban activism, smart urbanism, participatory and visual research methodologies. I have conducted fieldwork in Italy, US, and Sweden. Currently I am employed as a postdoc in the project “Smart cities for city officials”. In the project we are a team of researchers formed by myself, Professor Guy Baeten (PI) and Research Assistant Adriana de la Pena, and we are currently working on designing and implementing an online course about smart cities directed to city officials. (Read more here: The open access course “Smart cities for city officials” )
The concept of the course is innovative. Many online courses deal with the smart city from a technological or business perspective. Nevertheless, a course directed to city officials dealing with the smart city from a social science perspective is new. Additionally, the course will operate as a method in itself. The interaction in a learning environment will further co-produce fine-tuned understandings of the smart city and city officials’ role.
At the Course Collaborative Learning in Digital Environments, I wish to develop and deepen my knowledge on pedagogical digital tools for organizing and delivering an online course, with a particular interest in how to communicate online in ways that foster critical thinking and collaborative learning.