My PhD thesis is titled “Smart city visions, narratives and problematization: Comparing Smart Belfast and Smart Indore”. It is concerned with understanding the rationalisation of increasing datafication of urban centres and the impact it has on the governance of cities and its citizens. For this, it has explored the visions, norms, and narratives of smart cities. It has considered the role that international, national, and local stakeholders have played in rationalising urban centre’s datafication.

Cities have been found to be deficient on multiple fronts to allow smart cities to present digital technologies as the ideal solution. Cities are conceptualised as unsustainable, inefficient, and lacking good quality of life and economic growth. Digital technologies are presented as tools that can help build cities that are not only sustainable, efficient, with good quality of life and economic growth but also citizen centric.

Smart cities have led to a proliferation of similar visions and problematizations around the globe. The thesis compared the smart city projects of Belfast and Indore. These cities are distinct in their population, economy, geography, and socio-cultural elements. However, their smart city projects are similar and provide similar visions and narratives. For Belfast and Indore their smart city governance, the spatial focus in smart city developments, and the future visions of developments are quite similar. The local smart city projects then are heavily influenced by the wider narratives and problematizations. They are not always reflective of the needs of the individual cities. For effective, inclusive, and beneficial growth, individual cities need to ensure that their smart growth in aligned with the needs of their communities and citizens.

My project has made original contributions to the existing knowledge field. The theoretical framework of imaginaries and governmentality, the extensive qualitative discourse analysis of the smart city policies and strategies, the qualitative analysis of the definition of smart cities, the comparative case analysis between Belfast and Indore, and the empirical findings in the case studies are the original contributions that my research has made. Finally, my research also lays down the policy adjustments to make smart cities more effective, inclusive, and makes significant contributions to the existing knowledge field.

Archival Principles: The way forward for accountable algorithms?
Presented in the New Directions in Law and Society: A Graduate Student and Junior Scholar Workshop, October 2021
http://www.umasscjls.org/grad-and-junior-scholar-workshop.html

Discussant in the Law and Technology Panel in the Virtual Conference on Future Directions in Law, organised by Maynooth University, March 2022

Smart City’s Smart Citizen
Presented in the SLSA Conference, April 2022
https://www.slsa.ac.uk/images/conferences/YORK_Full_conference_programme_FINAL.pdf

2-day Annual Socio-Legal Masterclass on Methodology
University of Oxford, September 2022
https://www.law.ox.ac.uk/news/2022-07-28-socio-legal-masterclass-postgraduate-students

When Law’s Nonchalance is Dangerous
Presented in the IALT Conference, November 2022
https://pureadmin.qub.ac.uk/ws/portalfiles/portal/411776339/IALT_Programme_2022.pdf

Let’s create a city for all, a citizen centric smart city – mission impossible?
Presented in the SLSA Conference, April 2023
https://www.slsa.ac.uk/images/conferences/SLSA_2023_abstract_book.pdf

Law and Digital Societies – are we moving towards a post law society?
Poster in the Edinburgh Postgraduate Law Conference, May 2023
https://www.law.ed.ac.uk/sites/default/files/2023-05/EPLC%202023%20Conference%20Programme.pdf

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