Melissa Fernandez

Awards

2014 DFID Grant: ''Urbanisation-Migration Nexus Project (UM-Np) - Regional Research in Asia'' 2014 Higher Education Innovation Fund Grant: ''Housing in London: Addressing the Crisis'' 2012-13 STICERD/ARC/Urban Age Grants for research project on evictions and relocations in Rio de Janeiro 2011: LSE Seed Fund Grant for Livelihoods and Relocations Project 2011: STICERD grant (with Kath Scanlon) for ''Social Housing in Europe'' book project

Experience Keywords

Brazil; Puerto Rico; South East Asia; alternative housing; cities; co-housing; displacement; evictions; gender; geographies of home; migration; post-colonialism; qualitative methods; race; social housing; urban development; urban politics; urban sociology; urbanisation; urbanism

Research Summary

I am an interdisciplinary scholar with a PhD in Sociology from LSE, where I also got an MSc in Gender and International Development, and have a bachelor''s degree in Philosophy and Women''s Studies from Tufts University. In between, I have worked in the field of international human rights in the UK, U.S., and Puerto Rico.

My doctoral work focused on the political, material and symbolic co-productions of public housing in Puerto Rico. I am interested in the links between housing displacement/evictions, urban development/urbanisation and activism/politics in the global North and South; interdisciplinary approaches to processes of urban ‘othering’ including the imports of gender, race and postcolonial theories to cultural and urban studies; co-housing formation and alternative housing practices in London; and in critical geographies of home and home unmaking. My analytic approaches and methods draw on sociology, critical geography, development, anthropology, gender and post-colonial studies.

I have recently published an edited book on Social Housing in Europe (Wiley, 2014), focusing on the latest policy and developments of this sector in most European countries. I am the principal research officer in a DFID project on the ''Urbanisation-Migration Nexus'' in five South East Asian countries: India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal and Afghanistan.

Research Countries

Brazil; Europe; Latin America; London; Puerto Rico; South East Asia

Languages

French [Spoken: Intermediate, Written: Basic]; Portuguese [Spoken: Basic, Written: Basic]; Spanish [Spoken: Fluent, Written: Fluent]