Biography
Michael Keith is the Director of the Centre on Migration, Policy and Society (COMPAS) at the University of Oxford (previously held from 2014 to 2019). He is the Director of the PEAK Urban Research programme. He was, until 2021, co-ordinator of Urban Transformations (The Economic and Social Research Council portfolio of investments and research on cities) and is the Co-Director of the Oxford Programme for the Future of Cities. He is also a Co-Investigator of the Open City research project.
His research focuses on migration-related processes of urban change. His most recent works include Urban Transformations and Public Health in the Emergent City and African Cities and Collaborative Futures, both published by Manchester University Press, and The Unfinished Politics of Race, published by Cambridge University Press in 2022.
He has experience outside the academy, working in the community and voluntary sector, and, for 20 years, as a politician in the East End of London, as a leader of a London local authority, and as a founder, chair, and board member of a wide range of urban regeneration companies and public-private partnerships. He also has several decades of experience in the voluntary sector, initially in organisations focusing on racism and the criminal justice system and more recently as the co-founder and chair of the Rich Mix Cultural Foundation, the largest multicultural arts centre in the UK.
Select Publications
Podcast
Mobility & Future Cities: The Direction Ahead
Jacobs: If/When | 05/05/2020
Videos
Books
2025: Cities Rethought: A New Urban Disposition with Gautam Bhan, Susan Parnell, Edgar Pieterse (Polity)
2022: The Unfinished Politics of Race with Les Back, Kalbir Shukra, John Solomos (Cambridge University Press)
2021: African cities and collaborative futures with Andreza Aruska de Souza Santos (Manchester University Press)
2020: Urban transformations and public health in the emergent city with Andreza Aruska de Souza Santos (Manchester University Press)
Articles
2026
(Forthcoming) A Trail of Two Cities: Climate Anxieties and Slippery Objects with Bhawani Buswala, Mayanka Mukherji; Public Culture 38 (2)
Climate change adaptation in South Asian cities: A scoping review of literature from 2008 to 2022 with Jin-Ho Chung, Tim Schwanen; Cities 170, 106697, 1-13
2025
Urban Futures, Climate Migration, and Platform Logistics of 21st-Century City Systems; Theory, Culture & Society 0 (0)
Eyre and Eton in Camden: Uncovering the Colonial Histories of Three North London Housing Estates with Edanur Yazici, Susannah Cramer-Greenbaum, Karim Murji, Steve Pile, John Solomos; The London Journal, 1-22
Entanglements of race and migration in the (open) city: Analytical and normative tensions of the sociological imagination with Susannah Cramer-Greenbaum, Karim Murji, Steve Pile, John Solomos, Edanur Yazici, Ying Wang; Sociological Review 73 (1), 3-23
2024
Whose values? From the discrete to the continuous in how place and space matter in valuation studies; Environment and Planning F 3 (4), 356-363
Representing London: Making and Claiming the City with Karim Murji, Susannah Cramer-Greenbaum, Edanur Yazici, Steve Pile, John Solomos; City: Analysis of Urban Change, Theory, Action 28 (5-6), 793-811
Designing policy for Earth’s urban future with Jessica Espey, Susan Parnell, Tim Schwanen, Karen C. Seto; Science 383 (6681), 364-367
2023
Politicization, postpolitics and the open city: Openness, closedness and the spatialisation of the political with Steve Pile, Karim Murji, John Solomos, Edanur Yazici, Susannah Cramer-Greenbaum; Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 41 (6) 1075-1093
How do density, employment and transit affect the prevalence of COVID-19 pandemic? A study of 3,141 counties across the United States with ChengHe Guan, Junjie Tan, Ying Li, Tong Cheng, Junyan Yang, Chao Liu; Health & Place 84, 103117
Urban infrastructure design principles for connected and autonomous vehicles: a case study of Oxford, UK with Huazhen Liu, Miao Yang, ChengHe Guan, Yi Samuel Chen, Meizi You, Monica Menendez; Computational Urban Science 3 (34)
A new urban narrative for sustainable development with Eugenie Birch, Nicolas J. A. Buchoud, Maruxa Cardama, William Cobbett, Michael Cohen, Thomas Elmqvist, Jessica Espey, Maarten Hajer, Gunnar Hartmann, Tadashi Matsumoto, Susan Parnell, Aromar Revi, Debra C. Roberts, Emilia Saiz, Tim Schwanen, Karen C. Seto, Raf Tuts, Martin van der Pütten; Nature Sustainability 6 (2) 115-117
A progressive sense of place and the open city: Micro-spatialities and micro-conflicts on a north London council estate with Steve Pile, Edanur Yazici, Susannah Cramer-Greenbaum, Karim Murji, John Solomos; Geoforum 144, 1-11
Planning Logics in East London in Susan S. Fainstein, John Forester (eds), Resistance and Response in Planning, Planning Theory & Practice 24 (2)
Evaluating the impact of water protection policy on urban growth: A case study of Jiaxing with ChengHe Guan, Jairo A. Gómez, Pratyush Tripathy, Juan C. Duque, Santiago Passos, Tong Cheng, Ying Li; Environment and Planning B: Urban Analytics and City Science 50 (4), 1000-1019
'London is avocado on toast': The urban imaginaries of the #LondonIsOpen campaign with Edanur Yazici, Karim Murji, Steve Pile, John Solomos, Ying Wang; Urban Studies 60 (12) 2418-2435
2022
Climate mobilities into cities: A systematic review of literature from 2011 to 2020 with Jin-ho Chung, Bhawani Buswala, & Tim Schwanen Urban Climate 45 (2022) 101252
2021
Seasonal Greening approach combining big data and field observations. Urban Forestry and Urban Variations of park visitor volume and park service area in Tokyo: A mixed-method approach. (2021) with Guan, C., Song, J., KeiZhang, B., Akiyama, Y., Da, L., et al
Gómez, Jairo Alejandro, ChengHe Guan, Pratyush Tripathy, Juan Carlos Duque, Santiago Passos, Michael Keith, & Jialin Liu. Analysing the spatiotemporal uncertainty in urbanisation predictions. Remote Sensing 13, no. 3 (2021): 512.
2020
The future of the future city? An interdisciplinary framing of the PEAK Urban globe, with Neave O’Clery, Susan Parnell & Aromar Revi, Cities, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2020.102820
Delineating urban park catchment areas using mobile phone data: A case study of Tokyo with Guan, C., Song, J., Akiyama, Y., Shibasaki, R., & Sato, T. (2020). Computers, Environment and Urban Systems, 81.
The influence of neighbourhood types on active transport in China’s growing cities. With Guan, C., Srinivasan, S., Zhang, B., Da, L., Liu, J., & Nielsen, C. (2020). Transportation Research Part D: Transport and Environment, 80.
