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Lalli Metsola is an Academy of Finland Research Fellow at the University of Helsinki. His current project “Social infrastructuring and everyday governance at southern African precarious urban fringes” deals with how the necessity of the inhabitants to satisfy basic needs in the domains of residence, water, energy, and sanitation at the “informal settlements” of Windhoek, Namibia’s capital, involves relations among the residents, with various authorities, and between off-the-grid solutions and networked infrastructures, and how this contributes to the formation of city space, everyday governance, and urban politics. Previously, he has conducted research on claims and responses related to land, housing and basic services, and their institutional consequences in Namibia and Botswana. His PhD was an ethnography of Namibian ex-combatant and veteran politics. Lalli joins the Urban Institute in the Faculty of Social Sciences as a Visiting Fellow for the duration of his grant, with a study visit planned in person in 2025-2026.

Find out more about Lalli’s work: