Eduardo Ascensao
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Research
PhD Title: Informal urbanization in a post-colonial context – the lived experience of the architecture of shanty town dwellings in Lisbon, Portugal
Eduardo’s PhD research on slum and illegal neighbourhoods of African immigration in Lisbon, Portugal explores the notion of informal urbanization in post-colonial contexts. His research attempts to challenge normative and expertly-produced representations of space and definitions of home, housing and urban space (from architects, urban planners, etc) by focusing on the same notions but from the viewpoint of the populations that have informally built their housing environment in economically specific post-colonial circumstances and are now being relocated into standardized building environments.
With an emphasis on ethnographic methodologies, four different perspectives will be deployed in order to theoretically engage with the idea of informal urbanization present in slum neighbourhoods: 1) the ‘reading’ of the physical particularities of these places within the more general urban fabric and of the processes by which they have emerged, using the concept of ‘production of space’ (Lefebvre 1991) to enter into debates on urban morphology concerning vernacular and ad hoc urbanism; 2) the postcolonial context that has originated them, challenging ideas of global/third-world hierarchies in cities (Robinson 2006); 3) the political dimension of slum neighbourhoods in the city, of public policy trends in slum clearance and relocation processes, and of the relevance of public community projects or of the work of NGOs working in the field; 4) and the mental and communal experience of place, sometimes experiences of loss, that some of these projects try to culturally address.
Supervisors: Dr Loretta Lees and Professor Rob Imrie
Funding: Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology
Research Group: Cities Group
Eduardo’s PhD research on slum and illegal neighbourhoods of African immigration in Lisbon, Portugal explores the notion of informal urbanization in post-colonial contexts. His research attempts to challenge normative and expertly-produced representations of space and definitions of home, housing and urban space (from architects, urban planners, etc) by focusing on the same notions but from the viewpoint of the populations that have informally built their housing environment in economically specific post-colonial circumstances and are now being relocated into standardized building environments.
With an emphasis on ethnographic methodologies, four different perspectives will be deployed in order to theoretically engage with the idea of informal urbanization present in slum neighbourhoods: 1) the ‘reading’ of the physical particularities of these places within the more general urban fabric and of the processes by which they have emerged, using the concept of ‘production of space’ (Lefebvre 1991) to enter into debates on urban morphology concerning vernacular and ad hoc urbanism; 2) the postcolonial context that has originated them, challenging ideas of global/third-world hierarchies in cities (Robinson 2006); 3) the political dimension of slum neighbourhoods in the city, of public policy trends in slum clearance and relocation processes, and of the relevance of public community projects or of the work of NGOs working in the field; 4) and the mental and communal experience of place, sometimes experiences of loss, that some of these projects try to culturally address.
Supervisors: Dr Loretta Lees and Professor Rob Imrie
Funding: Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology
Research Group: Cities Group
Biography
Eduardo graduated in Social and Cultural Anthropology from Universidade Nova de Lisboa in 2001, with a thesis on the concept of Play in contemporary leisure spaces. After brief spells working in Museology and Contemporary Art, he started as a research assistant in the Sociology project ‘Lifestyles and “underground” markets in youth music bands’, developed at Universidade de Lisboa’s Instituto de Ciências Sociais and focusing on youth lifestyles, urban popular culture and social pathways.
