About
I am an urban and environmental studies scholar trained in political science. I have researched the politics and governance in and of large urban areas focusing predominantly on three areas of research. I have studied global suburbanization as the typical form of urban growth in the 21st century, and suburbanisms as specific ways of life on the globe’s urban periphery, distilled into my monograph Suburban Planet (2018). Since the 2003 SARS outbreak, I have studied the interrelationship of global and peripheral urbanization and the spread of (re-)emerging infectious disease, with an emphasis, recently, on Ebola in West Africa and the COVID-19 pandemic, the subject of my co-authored book Pandemic Urbanism (2023). Additionally, I have worked on the urbanization of nature in an area of research called Urban Political Ecologies recently reimagined in the face of climate change in the co-edited volume Turning Up the Heat (2023).
Awards
- Distinguished University Research Professor, York University, 2024
- York Research Chair in Global Sub/Urban Studies; York University, 2015-19
- President’s Research Excellence Award, 2013
Relevant Publications
- Keil, R. (2018) Suburban Planet: Making the World Urban from the Outside In. Cambridge: Polity
- Ali, S.H, Connolly, C. & Keil, R. (2023) Pandemic Urbanism: Infectious Diseases on a Planet of Cities. Cambridge: Polity
- Kaika, M, Keil, R., Mandler, T. & Tzaninis, Y. (eds.) (2023) Turning up the heat: Urban political ecology for a climate emergency. Manchester: Manchester University Press