Bjarke Skærlund Risager

Bjarke Skærlund Risager is a PhD Candidate and Fulbright Fellow at the Department of Philosophy and History of Ideas, Aarhus University. In his PhD project, he investigates sociospatial dimensions of movements and activism, primarily in the contemporary context of crisis and austerity in Europe. He does this from an interdisciplinary approach, where social movement theory, human geography, and political economy constitute the theoretical bedrock. He asks how the multiple geographies of crisis and social movement action intersect and how the relations between these geographies and the movement actors in question unfold. Specifically, he interrogates the sociospatial dynamics of square occupations, sociospatial imaginaries and performances of mass anti-austerity protests, the multiple relations between organization and activism, and the idea of the Right to the City in relation to contemporary anti-eviction movements in Europe. To answer these questions, he employs both qualitative analyses of textual material, participant observation and in-depth interviews.