Noe John Sacramento, doctoral researcher at the Faculty of Architecture and Planning, Thammasat University under the supervision of Asst.Prof.Boonanan Natakun, Ph.D, was among 25 early-stage PhD students from 17 nationalities selected for the 8th Doctoral School in Comparative Urban Studies, held in Vienna from 9 to 22 July 2026 and convened by Research Committee 21 (RC21) of the International Sociological Association (ISA), the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research (IJURR), and the IJURR Foundation, in collaboration with the Chair of Urban Sociology at the University of Vienna. The School was coordinated by senior scholars in urban studies: Claire Colomb (University of Cambridge), Alberta Andreotti (University of Milano-Bicocca), and Hanna Hilbrandt (University of Zurich).
The ten-day programme examined the interaction of theory, methodology, and methods in the comparative study of cities and urban socio-spatial processes. Sessions were led by leading scholars including Jennifer Robinson (UCL) and Patrick Le Galès (Sciences Po) on comparison, Mario Small (Columbia) on qualitative literacy, Mona Fawaz (American University of Beirut) on critical mapping, and Javier Auyero (UT Austin) on ethnography in contexts of violence, among others. Each afternoon, participants presented their individual research papers and received constructive comments and suggestions from peers and guest scholars.
John presented “Provincializing Urban Political Ecology of Flooding in Southeast Asian River Cities: Comparative Perspectives from Thailand and the Philippines,” which examines how flooding is relationally constituted through the entanglement of everyday governance, situated community knowledge, and more-than-human landscape elements in informally settled communities in secondary river cities of Southeast Asia.
The School culminated in the RC21 Conference at the University of Vienna on the theme “Inequalities and the City: Old Issues, New Challenges,” the largest RC21 conference to date, with 1,200 registered participants from 96 countries across more than 120 sessions.
