Biography

Dr Jonathan Rock Rokem is Associate Professor of Politics and Sustainability and Associate Director REF. His research interests span, urban studies, political geography, nationalism, planning, environmental politics and sustainability. He has specialisms in social and spatial analysis, interdisciplinary methods, and climate change adaptation and mitigation research in cities.

Jonathan’s overarching research agenda is committed to conceptualising a socio-spatial ontology that brings a new comparative perspective to urban studies and planning politics. He also investigates the deferential role of transport infrastructures as tools to govern social life in highly uneven and unequal settings.

Dr Rock Rokem publishes in international, peer-reviewed, multi-disciplinary scientific journals within the disciplines of urban studies, planning and human geography such as, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Political Geography, City, Geopolitics, Peacebuilding and Urban Studies. Prior to joining Northeastern University London in 2024, Dr. Rock Rokem held academic positions at the University of Kent, University College London (UCL) and Lund University, Sweden.

Research

Dr Rock Rokem’s research addresses:

(i) Urban Sustainability and environmental politics
(ii) Comparative urbanism and planning
(iii) Urban geopolitics and migration

Jonathan’s overarching research objectives are threefold: firstly, from a theoretical perspective to advance the cross-disciplinary field of urban geopolitics; secondly, to construct a multidisciplinary comparative research method to re-frame urban inequality as a dynamic and mobile process; and, thirdly, to create new modelling tools to enhance local communities’ and municipalities climate change adaption and mitigation strategies.

Dr Rock Rokem’s research has informed public policy decision-making and contributed to novel spatial and social approaches in the development of public transport infrastructures and climate adaption and mitigation strategies in the UK, Europe, the Middle East and further afield.

Research Projects

PI – MAPURBAN: ‘Migrant Mobility and Access to Public Urban Resources’ (2021-23) University of Kent, UK, Funded by JPI Urban Europe, Urban Migration Call (European Commission Horizon 2020 & ESRC, UK).

MAPURBAN utilised interdisciplinary multinational research findings informing policy strategies towards urban migration, re-framing immigrant integration as a multi-scalar (national, urban and local) process that contributes to sustainable urban development. The project comprised a team of leading academics and a range of municipal and civil-society partners from the UK, Germany and Sweden.
For further details see: https://jpi-urbaneurope.eu/project/mapurban/