Reframing Infrastructure: Artivism, Access, and the Politics of Space

This episode presents how marginalized communities transform both digital and physical infrastructures into contested terrains of identity and resistance. We move beyond seeing infrastructure merely as roads and wires, viewing it instead as a structural mechanism that defines who belongs and who can move. The session brings together two cutting-edge research projects by Global Majority researchers from Coventry University and Birmingham City University.

In “Creating New Identities through Artivism in Social Media: An Ethnographic Study of Sri Lankan Muslim Women”, ShameelaYoosuf Ali a Doctoral Researcher at Birmingham City University explores how Sri Lankan Muslim women use art and activism (artivism) on Facebook to establish spaces of belonging, resistance, and memory. Facing exclusion from dominant narratives and threats like surveillance, these women employ digital storytelling, poetry, and visual art as political gestures, transforming the social media platform into an "intimate archive." She uses blended methods (ethnography, conversations, workshops) to analyze how these creative, everyday acts—revealing a "silent defiance"—foster solidarity and serve as a form of collective memory and healing for a marginalized community. Her work also reflects on research as a decolonial act and a reclamation of voice.

In “The Streets We Don’t See: How Urban Design Creates Inequality”, Dr Arun Ulahannan, Associate Professor at Coventry University, discusses how transport remains one of the biggest barriers to inclusion for over a billion people with disability. According to him, in the UK, disabled people make up to a third fewer trips than non-disabled people, with inconsistent street design and poor first- and last-mile accessibility limiting education, employment, and social participation despite equality commitments. He argues that the design of streets directly shapes who can travel, and who can belong.