Rate My Professor Duncan McDuie-Ra

Professor Duncan McDuie-Ra is an Honorary Professor in the School of Humanities, Creative Industries and Social Sciences, College of Human and Social Futures, at the University of Newcastle, Australia. He joined the University in 2019 as Professor of Urban Sociology. Prior to this, he advanced through positions at UNSW Sydney, including Lecturer in Development Studies from 2008 to 2010, Senior Lecturer from 2010 to 2012, Associate Professor from 2013 to 2015, and Professor of Development Studies from 2016 to 2019. He also served as Associate Dean Research in the Faculty of Arts at UNSW Sydney from 2013 to 2016. McDuie-Ra holds a Doctor of Philosophy and a Master of Arts in Politics and International Relations from the University of New South Wales. He has supervised twelve PhD students to completion on topics including cultural agency, masculinity, and corruption.

McDuie-Ra's research in urban sociology centers on urban culture, examining cities, towns, neighborhoods, and connecting infrastructure, with a focus on their use and misuse in local and global subcultures. His work primarily addresses South Asia, particularly the borderlands of Northeast India, exploring rural-urban migration, frontiers, race and ethnicity, extractive industries, digital urbanism, environmental justice, infrastructure, gender and masculinity, piracy and fakes, ruins, technology, urbanization, and skateboarding. Key publications include books such as Borderland City in New India: Frontier to Gateway (2016, Amsterdam University Press), Skateboarding and Urban Landscapes in Asia: Endless Spots (2021, Amsterdam University Press), Ceasefire City: Militarism, Capitalism, and Urbanism in Dimapur (2021, co-authored with Dolly Kikon, Oxford University Press), Skateboard Video: Archiving the City from Below (2021), Northeast Migrants in Delhi: Race, Refuge and Retail (2012), Debating Race in Contemporary India (2015), and Combatting Climate Change in the Pacific: The Role of Regional Organizations (2018, co-authored with M. Williams). Recent articles feature Skateboarding in the empty city: a radical archive of alternative pandemic mobilities (2023), Preparing surfaces for shredding: Skateboarding, repair, and care across scales (2023), and Smart Cities, Surveillance and Speed in Imphal, Manipur (2024). He is a member of the Australian Research Council College of Experts (2023-2025), contributes editorially to South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies and Contemporary South Asia, and serves on the Asian Borderlands Research Network committee. Two of his monographs are available open access through the EU's OAPEN program.