Éric Denis

Éric Denis is a geographer and director of research at the CNRS (French National Centre for Scientific Research) within the Géographie-cités mixed research unit (UMR CNRS 8504). He conducts multidisciplinary research, alongside anthropologists and jurists, on informality and forms of negotiation and working-class settlement in cities in the Global South, particularly in Egypt and India, including comparisons of various metropolitan contexts (Chance2Sustain project, part of the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development, or FP7).

He has coordinated research into working-class access to housing in cities in the Arab world (Popular Housing and Urban Land Tenure in the Middle East. Case Studies from Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey, AUC Press, 2012), as well as a work on subaltern urbanization in India and the context of small towns and cities (Subaltern Urbanisation in India. An Introduction to the Dynamics of Ordinary Towns, Springer, 2017), and has published articles on the co‑institution of regulation standards between inhabitants and authorities (in Planning Theory and Practice, 2017). His research interests also extend to the question of the convergence of urban models in terms of circulations between the South and the North and the spread of flexibility, insecurity and informality.