The 120th ASC Seminar will be held on Friday, December 4, 2026. Under the title, "Making the Case for Hustle Studies: Thinking with Nairobi" our speaker will share their insights and research.
The 120th ASC Seminar
◾️Title："Making the Case for Hustle Studies: Thinking with Nairobi"
◾️Speaker: Prof. Tatiana Thieme
Bio: Tatiana Thieme is Professor of Human Geography at University College London. Drawing on longitudinal, multisituated, and patchwork ethnographic research, her work explores hustle economies, repair ecologies, and geographies of migration in cities shaped by continuities of coloniality, diasporic encounters, and city-making from below. She is the author of Hustle Urbanism: Making Life Work in Nairobi (University of Minnesota Press, 2025). Minnesota - Hustle Urbanism flyer.pdf
◾️Abstract: In this talk, Tatiana Thieme will discuss her book Hustle Urbanism: Making Life Work in Nairobi (UMP, 2025). In Nairobi's underserved neighbourhoods, "hustling" has become a vital survival strategy and a way of life for youth. Drawing on over 15 years of ethnographic engagement, Hustle Urbanism explores the meanings of hustling across practices of provisioning, distribution, exchange, learning, and mobilizing. The book centres the logics and inventive strategies of young people navigating job scarcity, inadequate services, police harassment, and climate-induced harms. It traces how they develop tools of resistance against legacies of colonial violence and uneven urban development, while carving out spaces of opportunity for themselves and their peers, through skills spanning circular economies and eco-activism to hip hop and grassroots leadership. The book offers a critical theorization of precarious urban life and making life work against the odds. While cautioning against fetishizing hustle as social and economic uplift, Tatiana calls for greater recognition of the ingenuity and skills it involves. She argues that studying vernacular hustle narratives and practices opens timely empirical and theoretical questions about overlapping urban struggles and possibilities that coexist in the everyday city, making the case for hustle studies as a wider field of inquiry.
◾️Keywords:
Hustle urbanism, hustle studies, precarious environments, urban youth, Nairobi, ethnography
◆Date&Time：Friday, December 4th, 2026 5:40p.m.～7:10p.m.（JST） 8:40a.m.～10:10a.m.（GMT)
◆Venue：【Hybrid】
・Onsite Room107（1F Research and lecture bldg.,TUFS Fuchu Campus）
・Online（ZoomMeeting）
・Access：https://www.tufs.ac.jp/abouttufs/contactus/access.html
◆Language：English
◆Addmission fee：FREE
Please pre-register in advence from here. Or Use QR Code.
The Zoom link will be sent after you pre-registerd.
Registration deadline: Noon December 4th, 2026 (Thu)
◆Jointly organized by African Studies Center - TUFS and Kanto Branch of Japan Association for African Studies