Dr Prince Guma

Emmanuel College
  • Smuts Research Fellow in African Studies
  • Moni Ghaffar Research Associate at Emmanuel College
  • Centre of African Studies (CAS)
Dr Prince Guma

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About

Prince Guma is an interdisciplinary social and political scientist specialising in human geography, with a focus on the intersections of spatial, social, and political processes in Eastern Africa and the wider Global South. His research spans urban studies, infrastructure studies, and science and technology studies, addressing critical questions of development, political economy, and social justice.

Beginning in 2008, Prince Guma spent three years working with regional institutions on initiatives aimed at strengthening local capacities before transitioning into academia in 2012. He earned his PhD in 2021 from the Department of Human Geography and Spatial Planning at Utrecht University, where his research examined the diffusion and adoption of new plans, ideas, and technologies in urban and infrastructural domains.

He is currently a Smuts Research Fellow at the Centre of African Studies. Previously, Prince served as Assistant Country Director at the British Institute in Eastern Africa, where he later became an Honorary Research Fellow.

At the core of his work are concerns with knowledge production, epistemic justice, and pluralization as redress. He is particularly interested in what it means to theorize from, with, and beyond the South—interrogating how African and Southern dispositions and epistemologies reshape dominant narratives and understandings of infrastructure, technology, and urbanization.

He serves on editorial boards including Urban Geography, Dialogues in Urban Research, Digital Geography and Society, Erdkunde, and UCL Press Urban Africa Book Series.

Research

Research interests

  • Urban studies
  • Infrastructure studies
  • Science and technology studies
  • Development studies
  • African studies
  • Human Geography

Key publications: 

  • Guma, PK. "Where is the African urbanist? Decentering and pluralizing global urban thought." Urban Geography (2025): 1-11.
  • Guma PK 2025. ‘Transforming the Smart City Ideal from the Margins: Everyday Regimes of Labor and Governance.’ Territory, Politics, Governance. 1–17. 
  • Guma PK 2025. ‘Everyday Infrastructures of Urban Life.’ International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 49: 479-497.
  • Tassadiq F, Silver J, Kallianos Y and Guma PK 2025. ‘The unending corridor: Critical approaches to the politics, logics and socio-technics of urban corridorisation.’ Urban Studies.
  • Guma, PK 2025. ‘13. Materialities of Everyday Digital Labor.’ In, Ed. E Bulut, JY Chen, R Grohmann, K Jarrett, The SAGE Handbook of Digital Labour. SAGE, New York, US. 2025.
  • Guma, PK 2025. ‘7. Reimagining Africa’s Rural Futures in the Digital Age.’ In, Africa's Rural Futures, James Currey. Oxford, UK.  2025.
  • Guma, PK 2024. ‘Smart cities and everyday urbanism’ Dombroski, Kelly, et al., eds. Introducing Human Geographies (4th ed.) Taylor & Francis. Oxfordshire: Routledge.
  • Guma PK 2024. ’Smart cities and their settings in the Global South: Informality as a marker.’ Dialogues in Human Geography, 14(3): 411-414.
  • Guma PK and Ongwech J 2024. ‘Expressway Trajectories: On the Road to Uganda’s Future.’ In T. Middleton, G. Günel, & A. Carse (Eds.), No. 11: Obsolescence. LIMN. DOI: 10.70312/GYZE
  • Ihnji J, Guma PK & Simone AM 2024. ‘“Humanistic” city in the age of “capitalocene”’ Annals of the American Association of Geographers. 114(1): 107-122.
  • Guma PK 2023. ‘Displacement, Out-of-placeness, and Urban Research in the South: An Experiential Perspective.’ Dialogues in Urban Research. 1(3): 236-239.
  • Guma PK 2023. ‘Incomplete futures of urban infrastructure.’ In, Wiig A, Ward K, Enright T, Hodson M, Pearsall H, and Silver J. Infrastructuring Urban Futures. Bristol: Bristol University Press.
  • Guma, P.K., Akello, G. & Ndlovu-Gatsheni, S.J., 2023. ‘Forum I: Decolonising Academic Cooperation.’ In Fleschenberg, A., Kresse, K. and Castillo, R.C. (Eds.). Thinking with the South: Reframing Research Collaboration Amid Decolonial Imperatives and Challenges (Vol. 44). Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.
  • Guma PK, Akallah JA & Odeo JO 2023. ‘Plug-in urbanism: City building and the parodic guise of new infrastructure in Africa.’ Urban Studies. 60(13): 2550-2563.
  • Guma PK, Mwaura M, Njagi WE, & Akallah JA 2023. ‘Urban way of life as survival: Everyday survival in a pluriversal global South.’ City. 27(3-4): 275-293.
  • Lawhon M, Follmann A, Braun B, Cornea N, Greiner C, Guma PK, … & Dannenberg P 2023. ‘Making Heterogeneous Infrastructure Futures in and Beyond the Global South,’ Futures. 154: 103270.
  • McFarlane C, Marvin S, Guma PK, Simone AM, et al. 2023. 'Post-Pandemic Cities: An Urban Lexicon of Accelerations/Decelerations.' Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers. 48(3): 452-473.
  • Cirolia LR, Pollio A, Sitas R, Sebarenzi A, & Guma PK 2023. ‘Silicon Savannahs and motorcycle taxis: A Southern perspective on the frontiers of platform urbanism.’ Environment and Planning A. 55(8): 1989-2008.
  • Guma PK 2022. ‘Thinking through frugal regimes of survival in times of crisis: Reflections and considerations for research.’ Journal of Social and Cultural Anthropology, 147: 113–117.
  • Guma PK 2022. ‘On tackling infrastructure: the need to learn from marginal cities and populations in the Global South,’ Journal of the British Academy, 10: 29–37.
  • Guma PK 2022. ‘Nairobi’s rise as a digital platform hub.’ Current History, 121 (835): 184–189.
  • Guma PK 2022. ‘The temporal incompleteness of infrastructure and the urban.’ Journal of Urban Technology, 29(1): 59-67. (Special Issue).
  • Guma PK & Wiig A 2022. ‘Smartness beyond the network: Water ATMs and disruptions from below in Mathare Valley, Nairobi.’ Journal of Urban Technology, 29(4): 41-61.
  • Guma PK, Monstadt J, & Schramm S 2022. ‘Post-, pre- and non-payment: Conflicting rationalities in the digitalization of energy access in Kibera, Nairobi.’ Digital Geography and Society. 3: 100037
  • The UPE Collective, Benjamin S, Guma PK, ... & Tonucci J 2022. Urban Popular Economies: Territories of Operation for Lives Deemed Worth Living. Public Culture, 34(3), 333-357.
  • Urban ECA Collective, Ahmed N, Baker AG, Guma PK … & Habermehl V, 2022. ‘Redefining the Role of Urban Studies Early Career Academics in the post-COVID-19 University.’ City, 26(4): 562-586.
  • Guma PK 2021. ‘Recasting provisional urban worlds in the global South: Shacks, shanties, and micro–stalls.’ Planning Theory and Practice. 22(2): 211-226.
  • Guma PK 2021. ‘Situating urban smartness: ICTs and infrastructure in Nairobi’s informal areas.’ Aurigi A. and Odendaal N. (Eds.). Shaping Smart for Better Cities: Rethinking and Shaping Relationships between Urban Space and Digital Technologies. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Academic Press.
  • Guma PK & Mwaura M 2021. ‘Infrastructural configurations of mobile telephony in urban Africa: Vignettes from Buru Buru, Nairobi.’ Journal of East African Studies, 15(4): 527-545.
  • Guma PK 2021. ‘Rethinking smart urbanism: city-making and the spread of digital infrastructures in Nairobi.’ Utrecht: Utrecht University; Eburon Academic Publishers. ISBN: 978-94-6301-302-4.
  • Guma PK & Monstadt, J. 2021. ‘Smart city making? The spread of ICT-driven plans and infrastructures in Nairobi.’ Urban Geography. 42(3): 360-381. (Honourable mention, Urban Geography).
  • Guma PK 2020. ‘Incompleteness of urban infrastructures in transition: scenarios from the mobile age in Nairobi.’ Social Studies of Science. 50(5): 728–750.
  • Guma PK 2019. ‘Smart urbanism? ICTs for water and electricity supply in Nairobi.’ Urban Studies. 56(11): 2333–2352. (Special issue).