Dr Clara Rivas Alonso successfully defended her Human Geography PhD thesis ‘State-led gentrification and time in Okmeydanı, Istanbul: Resisting uncertainties through everyday solidarities’ at the University of Leicester, UK, and under the supervision of professor Loretta Lees. She carried out an ethnography of a deeply contested informal urban space, the area of Okmeydanı in Istanbul, threatened with a state-led gentrification project and historically subjected to stigmatization and multi-faceted violence. Originally Spanish, she worked and studied in London since 1999, where she completed a BA in Humanities and History at Birbeck College, and an MA in Postcolonial Culture and Global Policy at Goldsmiths College. She has also lived in Istanbul, Addis Ababa, Abu Dhabi and now Paris, taking all these opportunities to reflect, and when possible, write about, constantly changing urban forms and the emancipatory possibilities of urban life.