Project team

Sociologist with a PhD in Sociology from El Colegio de México (Mexico). Director of the Sociology Programme at the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú (PUCP). His research focuses on everyday mobility in peripheral neighbourhoods and vulnerable populations in Lima and Bogotá, as well as cross-border migration flows in the Andean region (Peru, Bolivia and Chile), territorial integration dynamics, and urban development and informal urbanisation processes in Peruvian secondary cities. 

PhD in Sociology with interdisciplinary training in the fields of urban studies and architecture. Her research interests include modes of urban space production, socio-spatial inequalities, and public policies on access to land and housing, with a focus on Latin America and the Caribbean. She currently lectures at the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú and is a researcher at the Centre for Research in Urban and Territorial Theory URBES-LAB.

She holds a Bachelor's degree in Geography and Environment from the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Peru, with additional training in spatial analysis and statistics. Her research interest focusses on the protection of urban ecosystems, socio-environmental conflicts, and the defence of territories. She currently works on the indigenous people’s database area at the Ministry of Culture and is a researcher at the Urban and Territorial Theory Research Centre - URBES-LAB.

Doctoral student in Sociology at the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru. He holds a Master's degree in Urban Development from the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile (PUC). His research interests include urban marginalization, territorial stigmatization, and gentrification.  

Sociologist with a PhD in Planning from the University of Manchester (UK). Planning professor in spatial analysis and strategic planning at the School of Environment, Education and Development, University of Manchester (UK). She is also Director of the Spatial Policy & Analysis Lab. Her roles in the UK Research Excellence Framework and global collaborations with UN-Habitat underscore her impact on evidence-based urban policymaking.

Senior Lecturer in Urban Planning and Urban Design and a researcher of the Spatial Policy and Analysis Laboratory, University of Manchester, United Kingdom. He is an expert in quantitative methods applied to urban studies, with a focus in decision-support methods, urban modelling and spatial analysis. He works and has worked in research and applied projects on urbanisation, land use change, transport, mobility, governance, housing, energy and child labour, funded by British, Portuguese, Spanish, European and Brazilian funding agencies.

Historian with a PhD in Urban Planning from the University of California UCLA (US). Assistant Professor at the Urban Planning Programme, Columbia University (US). He has extensive experience in action-research with vulnerable communities. His work examines the impacts of climate policies in unequal urban contexts, particularly in Latin America and the US. Under his concept of "insurgent adaptation", he studies how communities resist forced resettlement and propose grassroots planning alternatives. As an educator, he creates decolonial frameworks in courses such as Urban Political Ecology, bridging critical theory with case studies. 

Urban geographer,  with an M.Phil. and Ph.D. from King’s College London and a Bachelor’s degree from Queen Mary, University of London. He works in the style of institutional political economy on a range of urban issues, particularly gentrification and displacement, urban marginality, territorial stigmatization, critical urban theory, and housing justice movements.  His most recent work provides a theoretically rich and empirically grounded body of scholarship on the vested interests currently shaping urban and housing policies in multiple contexts. He is currently the Director of the Ph.D. in Urban Planning Program at Columbia University.

Assistant Professor at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation, a co-director of the NSF Center for Smart Streetscapes and is an affiliate of the Columbia Data Science Institute. His research focuses on emerging practices using digital data and pervasive technologies to understand and shape better cities, while centering residents’ individual and lived experiences. Trained in architecture, urban design, and planning, Vanky has held positions at the University of Michigan and MIT, where he helped develop Michigan's urban technology degree and MIT designX, an academic accelerator for innovation in design and urban environments. He was also a research lead at the MIT Senseable City Lab. Vanky has presented and consulted globally, and his work has been shown at events like the Venice Biennale and Dutch Design Week.

Doctoral Student in Urban Planning at Columbia GSAPP. She holds a Master of Science in Urban Planning from Columbia University and a Bachelor’s degree in Architecture from the National University of Engineering, with a specialization in Methods and Techniques of Social Research by CLACSO. She is the Co-founder of Urbes-Lab, a research center aimed at understanding urban inequalities to drive social transformation in Latin America. She has been part of multidisciplinary teams focused on informality, inhabitation, and spatial justice. Her interests lie at the intersection of housing, immigration, and care work.

Doctoral candidate in Urban Planning at Columbia GSAPP and a Principal Researcher at CONURB-PUCP, a multidisciplinary research group in urbanism, governance, and social housing. Samantha’s current research explores the intersection of power and participation in urban planning processes. In her research, she draws from her experience as an architect, planner, urbanism specialist, and in public policy and regulation in the private and public sector in Peru and in San Juan, Puerto Rico. She holds a Master in Design Studies in Urbanism, Landscape, Ecology from Harvard University Graduate School of Design and a B.Arch. from Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú. 

Doctoral Student in Urban Planning at Columbia GSAPP. His research focuses on the intersection of disaster risk, informality, and climate sustainability. Mauricio’s work combines urban planning and computational methods, drawing from his experience in multilateral institutions and urban data companies in Peru and the US. Mauricio holds a Master's degree in Urban Planning from Columbia University and a Bachelor’s in Engineering from Universidad del Pacífico in Peru.

A Master's candidate in Urban Studies from FLACSO-Ecuador, he holds a degree in Sociology from the National University of San Marcos and is an associate researcher at the Urbes-Lab Research Center. His research interests include transnational migration, housing studies, residential mobility, care infrastructure, and urban peripheries.

Architect with a PhD in Planning from the University of Manchester (UK), with postdocs in United Nations University and Keio University (Japan) and Centro de Estudios del Conflicto y Cohesion Social COES (Chile). She is the Director of the Centro de Investigación en Teoría Urbana y Territorial URBES-LAB (Perú) and an invited lecturer on the Master's Programme in Planning and Urban Development at the Universidad Nacional de San Agustín de Arequipa (Peru). Having worked as a planner in southern Peruvian cities for ten years, she is currently researching urban policy and planning systems in Latin American cities, with a focus on Peru. 

Associate Researcher at URBES LAB. She studied Architecture at the National University of Engineering and holds a Master's Degree in Urban Studies from FLACSO-Ecuador. She researches the processes of urban space production and its socio-spatial manifestations, with a critical focus on urban policies, land and housing markets, mobility, public space and local governance, paying particular attention to secondary cities. She complements her research profile with teaching in research methodologies.