Inhabiting research through lived practice: A humanistic response to north–south ontological locationalities

Drawing from my lived experiences as a scholar-practitioner navigating north–south binaries, this commentary offers a humanistic response to Narayanan's (2025) Ontological Locationalities. Emphasising the significance of embodied knowledge, relationality, and everyday rhythms, I mobilise the conceptual frames of Henri Lefebvre's rhythmanalysis and Cindy Katz's idea of minor theory to invoke how a humanistic lens values biographical antecedents, emotions and affect, and the ways in which these entwine with the urban environment as the fertile grounds for urban research and planning practice. It is therefore not just where research questions arise but how these questions begin to be asked that also matter, with a conscious attentiveness towards the affective and material realities of place-making. In so doing, I offer humanistic urbanism as a complement in shaping the conversation around the need for pluriversalities as advanced by Narayanan (2025), where research is part of a lived practice sensitive to bio-spatialities, dwelling, situatedness, histories and multiplicities of the places explored. By inhabiting research, the humanistic perspective offers a challenging yet necessary pathway towards fostering inclusive and compassionate urban futures.