A collective study lab

Alana OSBOURNE

Assistant Professor in Geography, Radboud University

Concerned with socio-economic inequities at large, Alana is interested in the effects they have on corporeal experiences of everyday city life. Her past research at the University of Amsterdam investigated how violence and poverty are transformed into tourism experiences that can be purchased and consumed, and to the inequalities that permeate such encounters in Kingston, Jamaica. As an FNRS fellow at the Laboratoire d’Anthropologie des Mondes Contemporains (LAMC) at the Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB), she currently focuses on the Belgian Parliamentary Commission on the Colonial Past, where elected officials seek to find narrative consensus around the country’s colonial past and contemporary forms of racial injustice. Within this context, Alana probes the affects and emotions that inform the testimonies voiced during the commission. Both projects highlight how violence and racialized inequities are linked to coloniality, but also how urbanites subvert these legacies through sensorial and affective negotiations. With a background in film directing, she alternates and interlaces her academic work with film and theatre projects.

Selected publications

Osbourne, Alana. “Walking up to No Man’s Land, violence and commodification in the Trench Town tourism product.” Space and Culture, 2019.

Jaffe, Rivke, Eveline Dürr, Gareth A Jones, Alessandro Angelini, Alana Osbourne, and Barbara Vodopivec. “What Does Poverty Feel like? Urban Inequality and the Politics of Sensation.” Urban Studies, March 2019, pp1-17.