Between November 4-18, 2019 the City Institute hosted the third (and final) two week visit with our Visiting Professor Kevin Ward (Professor of Human Geography and Director of cities@manchester at the University of Manchester). Each of his three visits were intellectually stimulating, and a mixture of capacity building, mentoring, networking, and teaching.

During his time with the CITY Institute across the three years Professor Ward gave guest lectures; and departmental seminars; graduate seminars in urban sociology, development and analysis; participated in the 2017 Global Suburbanisms conference; engaged in joint capacity building work between York and other Ontario universities around urban studies; organized a Cities and Infrastructure one day workshop involving six speakers from the University of Toronto and York University and for an audience of approximately thirty; supported strategic development for the City Institute in terms of its future plan; explored ways of enhancing relationships between York, Manchester and other urban studies communities; met graduate students and post-doctoral scholars formally and informally; participated in the Early Career Professional Training Workshop in Urban Studies co-hosted with the University of Waterloo; started conversations and discussions over the hosting of the 2020 Summer Institute in Urban Studies (SIUS) in Toronto, jointly organised by York University and the universities of Manchester and Toronto; and applied for a  SSHRC Connections Grant with  Linda Peake (York) and Matti Siemiatycki (UofT) for SIUS.

Having Professor Ward with us for the past three years has been a true pleasure and we look forward to further developing our relationship with him and the networks that we have developed as a result of his time at York University
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