Dr Naama Blatman-Thomas

I am a Scientia Senior Lecturer at the Cities Institute, and Editor of Environment and Planning D: Society and Space.

As an urban and political geographer, my work focuses on two geographical locations: Israel/Palestine and Australia. I use a comparative lens and work collaboratively with Indigenous communities to interrogate how cities in settler colonies change over time. I am interested in the histories of settler colonial cities in relation to structures of land and property, but also in how these histories change and how they have been contested from the ground up and the kinds or lived experiences and future these contestations create for both Indigenous and non-Indigenous residents of the city. I am increasingly interested in the work of planning in forming and reforming land/property in cities, and in applying abolition agenda to urban transformation, within and beyond carceral spaces.

I am alumnus of the Urban Studies Foundation Postdoctoral Research Fellowship (2020-2023) and previously held the positions of Research Theme Fellow at Western Sydney University (2022-2024) and Lecturer in Urban Geography at The University of Sydney (2019-2022). Prior to completing my PhD, I worked and volunteered for several years in Human Rights and Palestinian non-for-profit organisations in Israel, including the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, The Galilee Society, Sadaka-Reut, and Bimkom-Planners for Planning Rights.