Research themes & conceptual approaches

• Urban energy transitions
  Community-based and grassroots energy initiatives; spatial dimensions of energy transitions; urban inequalities and uneven access to energy infrastructures.

• Political and socio-technical infrastructures
  Material and socio-technical approaches to infrastructure; urban infrastructures and citizenship; everyday infrastructural practices; governance of urban infrastructures.

• Heat governance and urban inequalities
  Governance responses to extreme heat; intersections between housing, infrastructure, and thermal inequality; lived experiences of heat and adaptive practices.

• Empirical focus: cities of the Global South. Extensive research in Rio de Janeiro in Brazil. Other cities: Kingston (Jamaica).

Funded projects:

Uncovering Heat Vulnerabilities in Rio de Janeiro's favelas, NWO Open Competition XS grant, (June 2025-June 2026)  

The project responds to the growing urgency of extreme heat in cities, while critically addressing the limits of existing heat-vulnerability assessments, which often rely on coarse indicators and overlook the lived realities of residents in informal settlements.

Focusing on favelas in Rio de Janeiro, the project develops and tests a context-sensitive and relational methodology to understand how heat vulnerability is produced, experienced, and negotiated in everyday life. Rather than treating heat exposure as a purely environmental or physiological condition, the project approaches it as the outcome of interactions between housing conditions, energy and water infrastructures, urban form, social relations, and everyday practices.

The research is explicitly transdisciplinary and community-embedded, built around a close partnership with Revolusolar, a favela-based NGO working on energy access, solar power, and social justice. Through this collaboration, the project integrates community knowledge, lived experience, and local priorities into all stages of the research, from research design to data collection and interpretation. 

Academically, the project brings together expertise from urban planning, human geography, and climatology through collaborations with researchers at Universidade La Salle (Unilasalle) and Fluminense Federal University (UFF). This interdisciplinary constellation allows the project to combine qualitative, ethnographic, and participatory approaches with technical insights into thermal comfort, housing performance, and microclimatic conditions.

The project’s key outcome is the development of a methodological framework for mapping heat vulnerability that is sensitive to informal urban contexts and capable of capturing cascading and relational dynamics across infrastructures. In doing so, it aims to contribute not only to academic debates on heat, infrastructure, and urban inequality but also to ongoing discussions with community partners and public actors about more just and grounded approaches to urban heat resilience.

The Open City Initiative - Development of a local and international network in urban studies at Utrecht University (with Abigail Friendly, Kei Otsuki, and Martijn Oosterbaan), 2021, UGlobe seed grant, Utrecht University

Interfacing Infrastructures for a Sustainable Heating Transition (with Jochen Monstadt), Transforming Infrastructures for Sustainable Cities grant, 2020, Utrecht University.

‘Digital Technologies and Urban Politics’, Centre for Urban Studies seed grant, 2018, University of Amsterdam.

The politics of electricity infrastructure: governance, technology and citizenship in Latin American and Caribbean cities - FNRS award, 2019 (3-years research project):

This project examines how the governance of infrastructure and citizenship change in urban neighbourhoods where sovereignty is contested. In cities of the South, precarious urban utilities (e.g. electricity and water) in low-income neighbourhoods often symbolize a failing citizen-state relationship. However, a diversity of non-state actors affects the way in which infrastructure is accessed and mediates this citizen-state-infrastructure relationship. Private companies often assume the role of providers, and, at the same time, criminal actors (gangs and militias) can directly or indirectly control these infrastructures. Moreover, users’ cooperatives attempt to introduce environmentally sustainable solutions (e.g. solar panels). This project studies the governance of electricity infrastructure and its implications on citizenship formation. Focusing on Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) and Kingston (Jamaica), it investigates (i) how non-state actors (private companies, criminals, users’ cooperatives) negotiate their legitimacy and redefine rights and responsibilities amongst citizens, focusing on technological and social arrangements; and 2) how citizens’ practices relating to these devices are linked to the negotiation of rights and responsibilities associated with political membership. Connecting science & technology studies to citizenship studies, it approaches infrastructure and its technology as mediating relations between citizens, the state, and non-state actors, and it extends understandings of citizenship, including their non-state mediations.

Participation in collective research projects (concluded)

HYBRIDELEC, "Hybridations électriques : formes émergentes de la transition énergétique dans les villes du Sud / Electric Hybrids: Emerging forms of the energy transition in Cities of the Global South", LATTS, CERI, PRODIC and CERI (SciencePo), PI: Eric Verdeil and Sylvy Jaglin (2018-2021)

ERC SECURCIT program “Transforming citizenship through Hybrid Governance: the Impact of Public-Private Security Assemblages” (2014-2018), University of Amsterdam. PI: Rivke Jaffe. As post-doctoral researcher (2017-2019)

DALVAA program “Rethinking the Right to the City from the Global South – Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America” (2014-2018), City of Paris grant, Université Paris Diderot. PI: M. Morange and A. Spire. As post-doctoral researcher (2015-2018)

TERMOS program “Energy Trajectories in the Metro-Regions of the South” (2010-2014). French Research Agency grant. Université Paris-Est. PI: S. Jaglin. As researcher (during the PhD). (2012-2013)