People

About me

In the current political context, the first thing I would like to say about myself is that I believe climate change is real, that we are in the midst of multiple environmental and social crises, and that all of these crises —societal, environmental and climatic—are the result of our careless relationship with the planet and with each other. Addressing these challenges mobilises my work, my thinking, my dreams, my life. I am convinced that there is still a place in academia to address these issues and I strongly advocate for an activistic and radical learning and teaching practices, whereby the generation and dissemination of knowledge are directed towards unveiling and understanding the aforementioned challenges and seeking paths towards more sustainable living futures.  

Responsibilities

Research

In August 2023, I started my role as project manager (work package 2) and researcher of the project T-winning Spaces 2035 funded by the Academy of Finland. The aim of our work package is to investigate the social and spatial implications for working futures and to propose and design novel spatial and land-use concepts focusing on work conducted predominantly at and from home and adjacent living environments, recognising and responding to multiple social, environmental, and climatic crises and challenges that enable or disable new working futures for a diversity of people.

Since September 2017, I have been working on my doctoral research which lies at the intersection of architecture, urban planning, and critical urban studies. My research interests include grassroots, radical, and insurgent spatial and planning practices, urban activism, and spatial justice; feminist and decolonial epistemologies as well as critical and creative research practices. I engage with Marxist, (eco)feminist, and decolonial theoretical perspectives and narrative forms of inquiry.

Teaching

I have over 10 years teaching experience, both in Mexico and Finalnd. My teaching vocation began in 2012 in Mexico, where I became part of the teaching corps of the School of Architecture at the Universidad Autónoma de Querétaro. I have developed the curricula and taught about eight courses since. Currently, I teach the courses of Sustainable Architecture with Sofie Pelsmakers and Urban Planning and Design Theory II with Panu Lehtovuori and Laura Uimonen at Tampere University. I have also supervised two master’s thesis, both of which deal with neoliberal planning, tactical and insurgent practices, and new roles for architects in the climate emergency. I believe that the purpose of teaching and learning today should be to make determined efforts to reveal and address the major societal challenges of our historical moment: the climate emergency, biodiversity loss, environmental degradation, social and environmental inequities and injustices, and brittle democracies. However, these immense and overwhelming challenges cannot be dealt with individually nor in the abstract, within disciplinary silos, inside the comfort of the classroom, ignoring other people’s experiences, and without engaging with communities beyond our academic boundaries. Therefore, I strongly advocate engaged, situated, and activist scholarship, whereby the purpose of engagement, and therefore education, is to advance the democratic transformation of our societies to be able to deal with the aforementioned challenges. 

Research unit

Architecture