Talja Blokland is an urban sociologist who has worked at Yale University, the University of Manchester and various Dutch universities. Since 2009, she has held the chair of Urban and Regional Sociology at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. Her publications include Urban Bonds (Polity 2003), Networked Urbanism (edited with Mike Savage, Ashgate 2008) and various articles on race and ethnicity in the city, poor neighbourhoods, urban violence, gentrification, urban middle classes and neighbourhood relations and everyday interactions. Carlotta Giustozzi is a doctoral researcher in the ERC-funded CORRODE project at the chair for social stratification and social policy at Goethe University Frankfurt. She holds a master’s degree in social sciences from Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin where she has worked as a research assistant at the chair of urban and regional sociology. She has been a visiting student at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and co-authored the chapter "The social dimension of urban transformations" in Mieg and Töpfer’s Institutional and Social Innovation for Sustainable Urban Development. Her research interests include social stratification, inequality and its manifestation in different national and cultural contexts. Daniela Krüger is a PhD student and research assistant at the Disaster Research Unit in the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology of Freie Universität Berlin and a member of the NYLON network of young scholars in New York, London and Berlin. She studied social sciences at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, the University of Bologna and the City University of New York. Her research interests are in urban sociology, social theory and research on vulnerability and social segregation in the city. Hannah Schilling is doctoral research fellow in the International Graduate Program "The World in the City" at the Centre for Metropolitan Studies of the Technical University Berlin; fellow of the German Academic National Foundation and member of the NYLON network of young scholars in New York, London and Berlin. In preparation of her dissertation research on precarious youth in Abidjan and Berlin, she worked as a research assistant in the international research program "Urbanizing Faith" at the chair of urban and regional sociology at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. Research stays in Madrid and Paris and her studies in social sciences at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin have informed her research interest in comparative urbanism, racism and (state) institutions in practice.