The City is a recurring series edited by Patrick Duggan (Northumbria University, UK) that examines what performance can do for understandings of 'the city', and vice versa.

Devoted to the examination of performance in/of/and urban contexts, the series is interested in research contributions that explore aesthetic practices, social and everyday performances, or combinations of these.

Performance is a vital and dynamic, but under-explored, means of understanding questions of urbanity. The City takes as its starting point the proposition that by reflecting on the work that artists perform in a city, by looking at performances of cultural events, by understanding strategic decisions as they are performed in a place, we can map, review and reflect on performances that make and make sense of a given urban context.

The series aims to expand critical understandings of 'the city' by thinking expansively about the ways in which practices and process of 'performance' play out in urban contexts. We welcome contributions that examine performances that take place in urban contexts, as well as the actions and practices in a city that make it a city.

Broadly, submissions should seek to explore performance as a means of understanding cities, or as means of recalibrating understandings of them and/or their surrounding areas. As a guiding frame, the series asks: how do we 'live' in or with urban contexts?

The series is particularly interested in new or novel approaches that explore interdisciplinary understandings of urban living and how these might be useful to understanding performance practices in a given place. The intention is to facilitate interdisciplinary collaboration and conversation, so submissions from any disciplinary area and on any topic related to The City are welcome.

By way of prompt, the editor offers the following broad questions (these are by no means exhaustive):

• If the city has long been understood as a 'text', how might performance practice and studies contribute to new understandings of this idea (especially in the twenty-first century)?
• How can theatre and performance make meaningful interventions in or contributions to city planning or urban policy, to architectural innovation, or to understanding the civic role of cultural industries?
• In what ways can performance reveal hidden or obscured histories of the city, and what are the (political, social, cultural) implications or consequences of such revelations?
• How might performance imagine and shape new city futures?

The editor anticipates (at least) the following types of submissions: theoretical essays; ethnographic projects; audio, photographic, video, and other digital projects about urban life and cities; and book reviews.

Please send all materials for this series to: Patrick Duggan (patrick.duggan@northumbria.ac.uk)

The City will be published in all issues (if accepted work is available) as a regular section of Liminalities.

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