William Conroy

William Conroy is a PhD candidate in urban studies and planning at Harvard University. He is broadly interested in the theoretical dimensions of political-economic problems, and is currently focused on developing an abstract-theoretical account of capitalist urbanization and the production of space in capitalist society. In line with that agenda, William’s ongoing dissertation project tracks the shifting place of “the urban” in American anti-imperial thought across the middle part of the twentieth century, engaging its invocation as a site of political intervention and category of socio-spatial analysis. His contention is that this intellectual-historical undertaking provides a distinctive vantage onto not only the political, economic, and ecological implications of capitalist urbanization during that conjuncture, but onto some of the most vexing questions in socio-spatial theory regarding capitalist urbanization as well.

In addition to his dissertation work, William has published widely since beginning his PhD, intervening in theoretical debates on, inter alia, the relationship between ascriptive difference and capitalist reproduction, the role of urbanization in mediating capitalist crises, and spatial dialectics. This work has appeared in Antipode, Environment and Planning A, Urban Studies, Theory, Culture & Society, and Review of International Political Economy, among other outlets. William is a Research Affiliate at the University of Chicago’s Urban Theory Lab.