Dr. Niloufar Vadiati

• Digitalisation across Grassroots, City, and Planetary scales
• Feminist Digital Geography: #Refusal, #Care and #Hope
• Platfrom Urbanism: #Infrastructural and #Speculational roles

2024-mid 2025 Visiting Scholar at Urban Transformation and Global Change Laboratory (TURBA), Open University of Catalonia (UOC) –Barcelona

2022-2024 Principal Investigator of two-year research project
“Grassroots Digital Urbanism in Berlin”
Funded by DFG Walter Benjamin program, hosted by Digital City Science, HafenCity University Hamburg 

2021-2022 Postdoc
LUV, participatory planning strategy for Urban Air Mobility, funded by BMBF, at Digital City Science Chair, HafenCity University Hamburg

2020-2021 Maternity Leave 

2018-2020 Urban Planning Consultancy 

2014-2018 Dr. rer. pol. (Urban Geography)
HafenCity University Hamburg (hcu-hamburg.de)
Department of Urban and Regional Geography
Research Topic: "Urban Legacy of London Olympic Games 2012 among Local East Londoners"

2009-2010 MSc in International Spatial Planning, accredited by the RTPI (Royal Town Planning Institute in England)
University College London (UCL), Department of the Bartlett School of Planning, London, UK

 
2004-2008 BSc in Urban Planning & Design, GPA: 17.10/20 (A+)
University of Tehran (ut.ir), Department of Fine Arts, Tehran, Iran

Book

Vadiati, N. (2020). The Employment Legacy of the 2012, Olympic Games, A Case Study of East London. 1st ed. Springer Nature.

Peer Reviewed Article

• Vadiati, N. (2022). Alternatives to smart cities: A call for consideration of grassroots digital urbanism. Digital Geography and Society, 3 (2022), 100030. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.diggeo.2022.100030
• Fraske, T., Rose, F.M. and Vadiati, N., 2024. Legitimation strategies in emerging ecosystems: The case of advanced air mobility in Hamburg. Progress in Economic Geography, p.100025. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.peg.2024.100025
• Vadiati, N., Chiappini, L., & Bangratz, M. (2025). (En) coding care into digital urbanism: Vignettes of collective practices. Digital Geography and Society, 8, 100120.
• Vadiati, N. (in press). Grassroots speculation in computational cities: Practicing hope around Berlin’s digital turn. Urban Studies, Special Issue on Ordinary Urban Speculation.

Commentary Article

• Vadiati, N. and Mehran, N. (2024) ‘Cities in Custody: Urban Development as Spatial Proxy of Ideological Coloniality’, Berliner Gazette. doi: https://berlinergazette.de/cities-in-custody/.
• Vadiati, N., & Mehran, N. (in press). Smart mandate in Iranian cities: From digital sovereignty to the automated oppression of everyday life. Dialogues on Digital Society, Special Issue on Authoritarianism in the Digital Age.

Editorial

• Vadiati, N., & Voigt, M. L. (2024). Refusal and the Computational City – From (de)coding the machine to (en)coding care [Call for papers]. Digital Geography and Society. https://www.sciencedirect.com/special-issue/1002PJ5FCBT
• Vadiati, N., & Singh, S. (2025, May 20). Digital Platforms as Urban Infrastructure [Call for papers]. Urban Matters Journal. https://www.iuresearch.se/call-for-abstracts-urban-matters-special-issue-digital-platforms-as-urban-infrastructure/

Media Publications

Producer and Host of **Digital Urbanism, from the Grassroots** Podcast:

• Episode 1: Digital City-Making, a conversation with Martin Bangratz (26 Aug 2022)
• Episode 2: Cyber-Feminist Urbanism, a conversation with Maja-Lee Voigt (Nov 2022)
• Episode 3: Technological Sovereignty Movement in Barcelona, a conversation with Casey Lynch (Feb 2023)
• Episode 4: Urban Hack and Informal Housing in Sydney, a conversation with Dr Sophia Maalsen (Mar 2023)
• Episode 5: From Urban Experimenting to Digital Sovereignty in Berlin, a conversation with Elizabeth Calderon Lüning (Apr 2023)
• Episode 6: Berlin Versus Amazon: Urban Resistance to “Techbros”, a conversation with Max and Yonatan (under editing)
• Episode 7: Feminist Hack Space: Heart of Code, a conversation with Marie Kochsiek (5 Jan 2023)
• Episode 8: Alternative Digital Economy and Platform Cooperativism, a conversation with Ela Kagel (Aug 2022)