معرفی
Dr. Thomas Betschart is an urban scholar and geographer affiliated with the University of Basel's Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Department of Social Sciences, and Urban Studies division. He holds the position of Associated & Guest Researcher at the institution.
His educational background includes a PhD in Urban Studies from the University of Basel (2024) and an MA in Geography, Linguistics, and Modern History from the Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg (2013).
Dr. Betschart's research focuses on the socio-spatial dynamics of infrastructure and urbanism in sub-Saharan Africa and Europe. His work examines the politics of large-scale, state-led infrastructure investments (roads, logistics, industrial parks), provisional spatial activations, and how both permanent and interim interventions mediate governance practices, resource distribution and social relations. From 2019 to 2024, he conducted SNSF-funded doctoral research in Ethiopia's Sidama Region, investigating how newly built roads and industrial parks reshape territorial governance at resource frontiers. Since January 2025, he has been directing a Fondation Botnar-funded project on intermediary urbanism in Switzerland and beyond.
His research contributes to debates in urban studies, political geography and critical infrastructure studies by unpacking the material and political dimensions of infrastructure-led development. His work seeks to foster epistemological exchange between Global South and Global North approaches to urbanism.
Dr. Betschart has conducted extensive fieldwork in connection with international technical development assistance in the urban and peri-urban areas of Lusaka, Zambia, and has held research assistantships at the Swiss Federal Office for the Environment in Bern (FOEN) and at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland (FHNW).
