Reimagining the Smart City: Luke Boyle’s Mellon/ACLS Fellowship research elevates South African voices

Boyle is reimagining what it means for a city to be “smart” by centering the lived experiences of marginalized communities in Cape Town’s informal settlements. Drawing from his own background growing up in one of the world’s most divided cities, his research challenges dominant narratives about technology and urban development while emphasizing resilience, creativity, and collective ways of envisioning the future. 

Luke is recognized nationally as one of 45 recipients of the 2025 Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Innovation Fellowship; this distinguished award seeks to support highly original and creative dissertations in the humanities and social sciences that innovate the norms and traditions of research in a fellow’s field. Luke reflects on the path that led him here, how his work aligns with the fellowship’s mission, and what other graduate students can learn from his journey.

Can you share a bit about your academic or personal background that shaped your interest in issues of global development and urban transformation?

I was born in the UK, but grew up in Cape Town, so I spent most of my life there. Cape Town is a really beautiful place, but it's also one of the most spatially and economically segregated cities in the entire world and is still grappling with the legacies of apartheid, which ended over 30 years ago.

Growing up was like living in a dual city, with a very jarring difference between the haves and the have-nots and that always troubled me. I wanted to incorporate that into my work somehow, and I was always interested in cities, the built environment, and urban development. 

What inspired you to pursue graduate studies in the College of Global Futures, and how did your path lead you to focus on African urban futures? 

I completed both my undergraduate and master’s degrees at the University of Cape Town, where I focused on urban sustainability. After that, I began working in a research unit at the university, studying different aspects of urban development in Africa and specifically South Africa. One of the projects I took on looked at smart cities, specifically the rapid rise of technologies being used in urban governance and development. While this is a global trend, it has more recently captured the way people think about the future city in Africa — and at the time, there was very little research on it.

From the start, I had concerns with the smart city concept and its reliance on technology as a silver bullet for urban problems. Looking at it from an African perspective, many of these technologies and ideas were developed in contexts very different from African cities. That raised many unanswered questions about how they would actually play out here and also how this model of urban development might reinforce the deep divisions that exist across the continent’s cities.

I wanted to explore what “smart city” means from an African perspective rather than simply importing ideas from elsewhere and applying them universally to very different contexts. That curiosity and critique are what led me to my PhD journey.

Your project centers on the experiences of those living in Cape Town’s informal settlements. Did you have an “aha moment” where you realized smart cities were not a silver bullet, or you thought, “This concept needs to be re-examined.”

It was more gradual, but there were moments that crystallized it for me. One example that came up, when I was doing the smart city research, was about bringing free Wi-Fi on city buses, which was modeled on cities in America and Europe. There is this big push for Africa to “catch up” with the rest of the world, as if cities like New York, London, or Dubai represent some aspirational future we should strive for. But, both from a telecommunications perspective, a social perspective, and a cost perspective, it made little sense.

In Cape Town, a significant portion of the city’s population lives in communities with little to no affordable access to the internet. Yet, the buses targeted for free Wifi were not the primary mode of transit for most people living in these communities. Those who stood to benefit the most from having free access to the internet barely received any benefit at all from this initiative. I remember thinking, why are we not focusing on trying to bring affordable access to the communities that need it most, rather than putting it on a bus? Whose future city are we trying to create here? It highlighted to me how the ‘smart city’ concept, when not applied with local people and contexts in mind, can deepen inequities in cities.

This experience reinforced the importance of taking ownership of the smart city concept rather than being dictated to by the other parts of the world.

How do you see your work challenging dominant “smart city” narratives, and what do you hope it contributes to broader conversations about technology and urban futures?

I feel the “smart city” has already had its moment, at least in academic circles. The issue is that it’s defined too narrowly. There are so many smart and innovative things going on, but the dominant narrative assumes technology and innovation only emerge from places like ASU or the labs of multinational corporations. In reality, there’s a tremendous amount of innovation happening in what some might call “unlikely places.” To me, these places are fundamental to deepening our understanding of what technology is and what the city is. My work is about broadening the scope of what we see as aspirational and how urban futures are conceived and constructed outside of dominant frameworks.

The communities I work with may not be on the cutting edge of high-tech, but their ways of seeing and engaging with technology are deeply aspirational. I hope to bring that perspective into broader conversations about technology and urban futures.

What has been the most surprising or eye-opening insight from your fieldwork so far?

The first thing that surprised me was how welcoming the community has been. The particular community I'm spending the most time with has been super open to me as a researcher, even though I do not have anything tangible to offer in return.

In Cape Town, and across much of the Global South, there’s a long history of research being exploitative and extractive, particularly in marginalized communities. That has created a lot of frustration and cynicism, and for good reason. So I was struck by how openly they welcomed me and my work.

Secondly, and more importantly, is the way that this community conceives technology as a collective. There is this Southern African philosophy called Ubuntu, which roughly translates to “I am because we are.” The profound sense of unity in these communities underpins their resilience. Despite living in very challenging circumstances, these people are incredibly resilient. 

What I've observed is that for this community, engaging with technology is about how the community can benefit as a collective rather than just the individual. How can we make the community's lives better? That's an incredibly powerful takeaway that I can already hold onto from this work.

The mission of the Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Innovation Fellowship is to support innovative dissertations. How is your dissertation innovative, and why do you think your project aligns with the mission of this fellowship? 

First, it’s because it’s focusing on marginalized people and communities, which is one of the criteria the fellowship emphasizes. In terms of innovation, I think my approach to conducting the research is innovative and different. It challenges norms; not just around what technology is, or what the city is, but also what the future is and how we understand it. I’m really trying to understand, through residents of informal settlements’  perspectives, what it means to live in a city with no electricity and no running water, what it means to engage with technologies from these spaces, and what it means to think about the future.

Just to give you a brief vignette of my work: one of the frustrations that drives this project is the idea that these spaces are “without a future.” Beyond the assertion that informal settlements have no place in the future city, this notion assumes that people who live in them don’t have the luxury of thinking about the future because they’re so preoccupied with existential threats. There’s some truth to that last bit, but it also takes agency away from people. For example, in the community I’m working with, anecdotally, according to the community, “90% of people are unemployed.” Yet the community leaders, who are mostly unemployed themselves, are deeply invested in supporting youth, making sure they can find work and have a better future. So it feels patronizing to say these people don’t think about the future, when in reality, they are very future-oriented and very community-oriented in the ways they think about the future. But it’s not ‘futuring’  in the ways that the Western gaze might expect, like a retirement plan or a five-year plan.

What’s really important to me is trying to understand people’s lived realities, spending time with them, and producing knowledge with them rather than through them. Instead of extracting information or coming in saying “this research will benefit you,” I approach it as: I’m interested in this, but what are you interested in? What do you want to know about your community? How can my presence as a researcher be useful to you? I’m happy to do the work, but I want your guidance, and I want it to be meaningful to you. To me, that’s innovative; breaking with traditional norms of how knowledge is produced.

I grew up in South Africa, but I hadn’t spent much time in informal settlements before this research. I was aware of them and had interacted with people from those spaces throughout my life, so there was some familiarity. But spending significant time there now has made me realize, perhaps this sounds cynical, that it becomes harder to justify having so much when others have so little. Historically, South African cities have been structured so that the wealthy don’t have to engage with these realities because it’s uncomfortable to be confronted with the challenges people endure daily. I hope to challenge that invisibility by centering the marginalized lives of South African cities.

For me, this work is not about showing how desperate people are. It’s about hope, resilience, and how incredibly resourceful, creative, and innovative they are in the face of incredibly difficult material realities. I don’t want to approach it from a “white savior” perspective, which is another problematic trope in research and global development. 

Instead, I hope to use the platform I have to elevate these stories and this knowledge. It’s not my knowledge, it’s theirs, and there’s so much to learn from these communities. Yet their stories and knowledge are seldom incorporated into formal knowledge production processes. Through collaborative research, I aim to represent their world accurately and challenge ideas about how and where ideas about technology and the future city should come from.

Was there a time when you may have thought, “Maybe this research is too much, or maybe this issue is too big, or I can't possibly tackle that?”

[laughs] That feeling came after I got the fellowship, when I realized, “Okay, now I actually have to do all the things I said I would! How the hell am I going to do that?” The work is incredibly complex, there are so many considerations things that you have to grapple with, especially when entering a community that has been, and continues to be, marginalized by systematic injustices. On top of that, you need to acknowledge the position of power that is afforded to you as a researcher. That influences your interactions, the way that you collect data, who gets to share their perspective, who doesn’t, and what pulls focus. It’s so complex and it is overwhelming.

What’s helped me is recognizing that in community-based research, there’s no one right way to do it. Each community is unique. You might screw up in one setting that wouldn’t even come up in another. I remind myself, “I probably won’t do it perfectly, but I know my intentions are good. I’m doing the best I can with those intentions, and hopefully that’s what comes through.” Also, just listening and being humble. To me, that means reminding myself that I am here as a student, and the community members are the real experts in what I am studying.

How did you first hear about the Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Innovation Fellowship, and what made you decide to apply?

A friend of mine in the Innovation Global Development Program, Salah Hamdoun, came across it and sent it to me, so that’s how I first heard about it. When I read through the proposal outline, I thought, “This really fits squarely with the work I’m doing.” So I figured if I could put together a solid application, I might have a good shot, and so I went for it.

What was the application process like for you, and do you have any advice for students considering applying before the October 29 deadline?

I think the first thing to know is that it’s a very competitive fellowship. That means your research needs to align well with the program to get serious consideration. So if you’re unsure whether it’s the right fit, keep in mind that it’s a significant amount of work, and you’ll want to be confident it’s worth the effort.

For me, it was probably the most work I’ve ever put into a proposal. Not because it was overly demanding, but because I wanted to give it my absolute best. There are a lot of requirements to get through, but they are manageable.

My advice is to start early. Since the deadline is October 29, if you haven’t started yet, now’s the time. You’ll want enough lead time to share drafts with your committee members and peers so they can review before you submit. And finally, as simple as it sounds, make sure you read the instructions carefully.

Beyond being selected for a fellowship, what kinds of resources, mentorship, or community has the fellowship or ASU connected you with?

It’s still early in my fellowship, but already there have been some great resources and connections. For example, we have a WhatsApp group that links many of the fellows doing similar research. It’s become a supportive community where we’ve created accountability groups to help each other stay on track. It’s helpful even for practical things, like navigating visa information, which is helpful since many of us are international students conducting prolonged research overseas. 

One really cool benefit of the fellowship is that you’re required to have a mentor outside of your committee. This pushes you to look outside your institutional bubble, build networks, and create a relationship with a mentor outside your institution. Those mentors could be anyone — a religious leader in a community you’re working in, or a prestigious professor from another university. This has led me to connect with my mentor, David Nemer from the University of Virginia, who does amazing anthropological work in Brazil’s favelas.

There’s also a professional development fund for conferences and programs such as winter or summer schools. I’m using it to learn IsiXhosa, which is the language spoken in the community where I work. I’ve always wanted to learn it but never had the dedicated time or money, so the fellowship has been an awesome opportunity.

At ASU, I have an amazing committee chaired by Lauren Keeler and supported by Jenna Hanchey and Geci Karuri-Sebina. Their mentorship and diverse complementary expertise have really supported me in tackling my research from different angles. They’ve prepared me not just for this part of my dissertation, but for getting here in the first place. The School for the Future of Innovation in Society is small and modestly funded, but the faculty are incredibly generous with their time and resources, and they’re deeply committed to their students’ success.

How has your experience at ASU prepared you to fulfill the specific mission of the award you received, or what is something you’ve gained here that you don’t think you would have found anywhere else?

There's just an amazing intellectual community that I've been a part of at ASU and SFIS, and that's been the most enriching part of my journey at ASU. You know, they say it takes a village to raise a child — I feel the village I found at ASU has helped raise me as an emerging scholar.

Are you curious about funding opportunities to support your graduate journey?

If you are interested in applying for the Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Innovation Fellowship, ASU’s Office of National Scholarships Advisement has resources and expertise to help improve your application and ensure it aligns with the award’s expectations . Please reach out to Dr. Mitch Hobza, [email protected], as soon as possible to ensure the award is the right fit for you and to get feedback on your application materials. 

Additionally, you can join Dr. Hobza, ASU’s senior program manager for Distinguished Graduate Fellowships, at a monthly Zoom session on applying to competitive fellowships and grants (such as the 2025 Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Innovation Fellowship). These information sessions will introduce you to the tools and strategies you need to find and write a successful application.

See ONSA’s events page for more information and to register.