Campus
- Scarborough (UTSC)
Fields of Study
- Policy & Planning
- Social & Political Geography
- Urban
Areas of Interest
Urban social policy, (post-)welfare states, social infrastructure, urban green/blue spaces, community geography & participatory methods.
Biography
My work focuses on the politics of social infrastructure in cities across North America and Western Europe. I have taught a wide variety of courses in Canada and Germany on topics including welfare state restructuring, immigration and settlement, city politics, community-based research, and urban planning. In my research and teaching practice, I centre community-engaged approaches and participatory methods, linking academic knowledge production with social action and public scholarship. While my main responsibility is undergraduate teaching, I welcome inquiries from prospective applicants to the MA program in Geography (and MSc Planning students looking for CIP readers) with interest in social infrastructure, urban social policy and welfare states, neighbourhood inequality and spatially-targeted policies, and the urban parks and beaches. Visiting fellow at the Center for Metropolitan Studies (Technische Universität Berlin) during the 2023/2024 academic year studying urban beaches and public pools as contested social infrastructure.
Publications
Ahmed Allahwala, (2024). The struggle to preserve Hanlan’s Point Beach as queer social infrastructure”, Metropolitics, 28 May 2024. https://metropolitics.org/The-Struggle-to-Preserve-Hanlan-s-Point-Beach-...
Allahwala, A., & Bhatia, A. (2022) Supporting youth-led community geography on the impacts of neighbourhood social infrastructure on young people’s lives: a case study from East Scarborough, Canada. GeoJournal 87, 329–342. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10708-021-10473-8
Allahwala, A., & Keil, R. (2021). The political economy of COVID-19: Canadian and comparative perspectives — an introduction. Studies in Political Economy, 102(3), 233–247. https://doi.org/10.1080/07078552.2021.2000210
Allahwala, A., Mustachi, J., Bellaire, K. & Yuyitung, K. L. (2015). Empowering communities or reproducing stereotypes: Negotiating power/knowledge in service-learning involving youth, Currents in Teaching and Learning 7(1): 6-22.
Allahwala, A. & Bunce, S. (2013). Building and Sustaining Community-University Partnerships in Marginalized Urban Areas. Journal of Geography. 112:2, 43-57, DOI: 10.1080/00221341.2012.692702
Allahwala, A., Keil, R. & Boudreau, J.-A, (2010). Neo-liberal Governance: Entrepreneurial Municipal Regimes, in: T. Bunting and P. Filion (Eds.). Canadian Cities in Transition: Local through Global Perspectives (4th Edition), Oxford University Press.