My commitment to apply innovative research to problems of social and political importance has formed the goal of my academic activities and research practices. Building on my doctoral and postdoctoral work, I strive to contribute to theoretical and methodological considerations about rapid urban transformation in the context of pressing issues to find new ways to deal with global social and environmental challenges. Inspired particularly by feminist and post- and decolonial scholarship, I aim to critically revise parochial conceptualizations and engage in the development of a variety of theoretical and methodological perspectives.
My book Ethnography of urban Territories (2018, Westfälisches Dampfboot) is a major output of my interdisciplinary approach and extensive fieldwork in Mexico City. The book provides insights into everyday forms of agency in urbanization and contributes to an understanding of the spatial dimension of society. The primary research presented is based on two main interests: on the one hand, a focus on understanding the predominant urbanization processes which have shaped the metropolitan territories of Mexico City in a historical as well as in a contemporary perspective. On the other hand, the scope of the research entailed developing and applying an interdisciplinary mixed set of methods to study urbanization processes empirically at large scale. In papers published in Urban Studies and FQS I discuss some of these findings.
Having extended field research experience, has turned positionality, self-reflexivity and ethnographic writing into key concepts of my research. My current research project Decolonizing ecology draws on my expertise in methods and methodologies of qualitative urban research, particularly on ethnography and cartography, and advances them with collaborative and dialogical approaches including mapping workshops and oral history interviews to co-produce urban knowledge and represent different practices together with indigenous urban communities and Latin America-based scholarship. Current ongoing academic collaborations include the Instituto de Investigaciones Socio-Económicas de la Universidad Católica Boliviana UCB, La Paz, and the Instituto de Geografía de la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México UNAM, Ciudad de México.
