• Homepage
• Who we are
• Team members
• Education
• Research
• Publications
• Urban Studies Network
• Links
• Members space

Centre for urban research
COSMOPOLIS. City, Culture
& Society

Free University Brussels

Pleinlaan 2, 1050 Brussel
Tel: + 32 (0) 2 629 37 41
Fax: + 32 (0) 2 629 33 78
cosmopolis@vub.ac.be

COSMOPOLIS is related to the department of Geography at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel and a member of the UAB Urban Studies Network, an interdisciplinary research and teaching network in urban studies.

COSMOPOLIS - City, Culture & Society. The story of an encounter...

The research team COSMOPOLIS - City, Culture & Society is the product of an encounter. In the year 2000 Brussels was the European Capital of Culture. The university was present in the programme through different activities of science popularisation. We headed a project called Crossing Brussels, in which an “urban laboratory” (three transformed buses) entered neighbourhoods with a week-long fieldwork combining science, art and community activation. It was clear that urban studies needed to confront the full complexity of the city and therefore had to cross borders of the academic institution, scientific disciplines and cultural representations.

COSMOPOLIS was set up as a transdisciplinary research centre in urban studies, with a focus on the relationship between city, culture and society. The research programme examines the processes of globalisation and localisation (glocalisation), the changing relationship between world system and system of nation-states and the collateral processes of urbanisation and urbanity (as a post-national cultural condition). Its main focus is on social and cultural geographies, urban cultural development strategies, sustainable (neighbourhood) development and participatory democracy.

COSMOPOLIS is linked to the Social Geography of the Department of Geography of the Free University of Brussels. The members of the team have backgrounds in Philosophy, Geography, Urbanism, Sociology, History, Anthropology, Architecture, Cultural Studies, Agogics and Human Ecology. COSMOPOLIS forms part of international networks mainly through educational projects: POLIS, UNICA Master in Urban Studies, 4CITIES, UNICA Euromaster in European Urban Studies and our Erasmus Mundus Module Urban Studies. COSMOPOLIS is also a member of INURA (International Network for Urban Research and Action).

COSMOPOLIS is an active member of the UAB Urban Studies Network, a network of researchers linked to the Free University of Brussels and the Erasmushogeschool within the University Association Brussels. De goal of the Urban Studies Network is to maximise research and educational synergies.