Staff profile

I am an urban and economic geographer with interests in digital technologies, political economy, and postcolonial urbanism. 

My longest-running project examines how ‘super-app’ platforms in Jakarta, Indonesia are transforming urban governance, economic development, and labour politics, asking what these changes can tell us about platform capitalism in cities of the global South. Through qualitative methods, I centre how these transformations are experienced, produced, and resisted by the urban majority as they navigate the promises and perils of digital technologies for everyday life. My current project explores how financial technology (FinTech) platforms are re-organising Jakarta's informal credit markets, peer-to-peer lending practices, and social relations of debt.

Additionally, I have also worked on an interdisciplinary project on ‘speculative urbanism’ (with Helga Leitner and Eric Sheppard, UCLA), exploring the drivers of urban and peri-urban land transformation in Jakarta and the impacts of displacement on residents’ life outcomes. 

I received my PhD in Geography from UCLA and hold additional degrees in Geography from UCLA (MA) and the University of Washington (BA). 

I welcome expressions of interest from prospective PhD students, particularly those with research interests in digital platforms, Indonesia, and urban or economic geography.

Chapter in book

• Ethnography In The Boundary Zones: On Robert Fairbanks’ How It Works
  
  Nowak, S., & Howard, T. (2020). Ethnography In The Boundary Zones: On Robert Fairbanks’ How It Works. In H. Leitner, J. Peck, E. Sheppard, S. Nowak, & T. Howard (Eds.), Urban Studies Inside/Out: Theory, Method, Practice (pp. 133-142). SAGE Publications Ltd. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781529721423.n10

Journal Article

• Jakarta: Taking the field seriously
  
  Colven, E., Nowak, S., Anguelov, D., Irawaty, D., Sheppard, E., Leitner, H., & The Jakarta Collective. (2024). Jakarta: Taking the field seriously. Environment and Planning A, 56(3), 988-995. https://doi.org/10.1177/0308518x241233907
• Everyday speculation in the remaking of peri-urban livelihoods and landscapes
  
  Leitner, H., Nowak, S., & Sheppard, E. (2023). Everyday speculation in the remaking of peri-urban livelihoods and landscapes. Environment and Planning A, 55(2), 388-406. https://doi.org/10.1177/0308518x211066915
• The social lives of network effects: Speculation and risk in Jakarta's platform economy
  
  Nowak, S. (2023). The social lives of network effects: Speculation and risk in Jakarta’s platform economy. Environment and Planning A, 55(2), 471-489. https://doi.org/10.1177/0308518x211056953
• Middle-Class Poverty Politics: Making Place, Making People
  
  Elwood, S., Lawson, V., & Nowak, S. (2015). Middle-Class Poverty Politics: Making Place, Making People. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 105(1), 123-143. https://doi.org/10.1080/00045608.2014.968945