Edward W. Soja

Who is Edward W. Soja?

Edward William Soja is a postmodern political geographer and urban planner on the faculty at UCLA, where he is Distinguished Professor of Urban Planning, and the London School of Economics. He has a Ph.D. from Syracuse University. His early research focused on planning in Kenya.

In addition to his readings of American feminist cultural theorist bell hooks, and French intellectual Michel Foucault, Soja's greatest contribution to spatial theory and the field of cultural geography is his use of the work of French Marxist urban sociologist Henri Lefebvre, author of The Production of Space. Soja has updated Lefebvre's concept of the spatial triad with his own concept of spatial trialectics which includes thirdspace, or spaces that are both real and imagined.

Soja focuses his critical postmodern analysis of space and society, or what he calls spatiality, on the people and places of Los Angeles. In 2010 the University of Minnesota Press has released his latest book, focused on Spatial justice.

Soja has collaborated on research and writing with, most notably, Professor Allen J. Scott, Michael Storper, Fredric Jameson, David Harvey, and various faculty in the departments of Urban Planning, Architecture, Policy Studies, and Geography at UCLA. Soja's research assistants for his latest work, Seeking Spatial Justice, include Mustafa Dikec, Joe Boski, Tom Kemeny, Walter Nichols, Alfonso Hernandez-Marquez, Stefano Bloch, Ava Bromberg, and Konstantina Soureli.