International Fellowships for Early to Mid-Career Urban
Scholars from the Global South
Report - Mariana Fix, Instituto de Economia da Unicamp, mfix@uol.com.br
In 2012, I was awarded an International Fellowship by the Urban Studies
Foundation to carry out the research project ‘Financialization of Home and
The City: Reflections on the Brazilian Real Estate Market in the Global
Context.’
As a part of this fellowship, I spent four months, November 2012 to March
2013, as a visiting scholar at The Center for Place, Culture and Politics
(CPCP), at the City of New York University (CUNY).
Professor David Harvey acted as my mentor during the fellowship. I had the
opportunity to meet with him several times in courses, seminars and
interviews.
CPCP provided shared office space, access to CUNY’s library and research
facilities, and invited me to participate in their weekly seminars. During my
stay at the CUNY Graduate Center, I attended classes in different courses led
by Professors Harvey and Ruth Gilmore. I also visited Hunter College, where I
met Professor Tom Angotti and attended several of his classes.
Professor Barbara Deutsch Lynch invited me to visit Georgia Tech, where we
met several times to discuss my work. During my stay in Atlanta, Professor
Deutsch read and commented on a draft of my presentation, and also invited
me to teach a class in her course, as well as an open conference in the PhD
Lecture Series.
In Atlanta, I visited several sites that were very important to the development
of my work, including a trip to the Pittsburgh district, which suffered
devastating effects from the 2007 financial crisis, evidenced by the high
number of evictions. This allowed me to personally verify some of the
processes investigated during the doctorate.
In New York, I took part in activities at Columbia University, where I had
conversations with professors Reinhold Martin, Kadambari Baxi, Peter
Marcuse and Clara Irrazabal, all of which really enriched my time there.
During the sabbatical, I was invited to join a preliminary examination for a
dissertation and to give a lecture at Virginia Tech, in Alexandria.
I spent a few days in Brasília to receive the 2012 award for best PhD thesis in
Economics, granted by the Brazilian institution CAPES (Coordinating Institute
for the Development of Higher-Education Professionals), which was
announced during my sabbatical.
Below is a list of my main activities over the course of the four-month
sabbatical.
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1. Lectures and Presentations
I was invited to present my research at three universities: Columbia University
(New York), Georgia Tech (Atlanta) and Virginia Tech (Alexandria). I prepared
a different lecture for each event. At each lecture, the numerous comments
and remarks from the audience and host teachers were important
contributions to the work.
1.1 Georgia Tech, Atlanta
The conference was part of the PhD Lecture Series and was organized by a
graduate student. It was attended by numerous researchers and graduate
students.
Title: Global Finance and Predatory Land Occupation in Brazilian Cities
Date: Friday, January 18th, 2013 – 12PM-2PM
Location: Georgia Tech, D.M. Smith Building, Room 203
1.2 Columbia University, New York
The event was co-hosted by the Latin Lab and the Buell Center, and hosted
by professors Irrazabal Clara and Reinhold Martin. Professor Peter Marcuse
attended the debate. The three professors made important remarks about my
work, and several other important points were raised by the audience.
Title: "Financializaton of the Home and the City: From the United States to
Brazil.”
Date: February 15th, 2013
Location: Columbia University
1.3 Virginia Tech, College of Architecture and Urban Studies, Alexandria,
VA
I was invited by Professors Giselle Datz and Derek Hyra, and also by
graduate student Priscilla Izar, who participated in the activity and made
important contributions. The lecture was given to a smaller, more restricted
audience, comprised mainly of graduate students from university courses, and
held during class hours.
Title: "Financializaton of the Home and the City: From the United States to
Brazil."
Location: 1021 Prince Street, Room 304, Alexandria, VA, 22314; Polycom to
Blacksburg, Architecture Annex, 200
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1.4 Others
1.4.1 Working session of the project ‘Who Builds Your Architecture (1.5),’
hosted by The Architecture League, New York, NY, on February 5 th, 2013.
1.4.2 Priscilla Izar First Preliminary Examination, Theme: Globalization and
Local Development, with Derek Hyra and Giselle Datz (via Skype, New York).
1.4.3. I attended the two-day Urban Uprising conference, which took place on
Friday, November 30th at the CUNY Graduate Center, and Saturday,
December 1st at The New School. On the first day, I attended the sequence of
round tables. On the second day I attended two workshops, where I met
social movement activists, students and people working in public
administration agencies.
2. Writing
During the sabbatical, I wrote the draft of an article that summarizes my
thesis. This draft was essential to fostering discussions on the subject during
my stay in New York City. This article is at its final stages and will soon be
submitted to New Left Review and/or to Urban Studies for publication
In addition to that article, I wrote the three lectures mentioned above.
I also wrote two additional articles. The first, also based on my thesis, was
written in collaboration with other Brazilian researchers and is in its final
stages. During the sabbatical I sent a summary of the article to the XV
Meeting of the National Association of Graduate Programs and Research in
Urban and Regional Planning (ANPUR). The paper was accepted and
presented in May of 2013, in Recife, Brazil.
The second article refers to a survey on metropolitanization, which I began
conducting in Brazil in the months prior to the sabbatical, and finished during
the sabbatical. This article was published in the book Território Metropolitano,
políticas municipais (Metropolitan Territory, Municipal Policies), published by
IPEA.
3. Seminars and Classes (attended)
During the sabbatical, I attended courses by Professors Ruth Gilmore and
David Harvey at the Graduate Center, and by Professor Tom Angotti at
Hunter College. Although the short length of my stay prevented me from
attending the entirety of the courses, I was able to get a solid understanding
of the programs, perform various readings, and learn a bit of the dynamics of
the CUNY courses. I even attended a class in the course led by Professor
Clara Irrazabal for graduate students at Columbia, where I occasionally
contributed as a panelist after the students presented their work.
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4. Research Conversations
Besides meeting with professors David Harvey and Barbara Deutsch Lynch, I
was also able to directly discuss my research during interviews with
Professors Tom Angotti and Ruth Gilmore (CUNY), Professor Immergluck
(Georgia Tech) and graduate students Desiree Fields (CUNY), Elora
Raymond (Georgia Tech) and Priscilla Izar (Virginia Tech). I also privately met
with the professors who hosted me at each activity. Thus, the sabbatical
allowed me to continue old conversations and start new ones.
During the sabbatical I answered a call for papers from the Royal Geography
Society seminar, and had my work approved to be presented in London in
August of 2013, broadening the dialogue with professors and teachers from
other countries, the central goal of the USF scholarship.
5. Field Visits
Due to the theme of work, field visits were always very important. During the
sabbatical I had the opportunity to learn much more about New York. Among
the various urban processes I had researched is the Lower East Side
process, where I was able to interview one of the squatters who occupied
buildings in the 1980s.
In Atlanta, I was able to visit many districts affected by foreclosures and the
housing developments of the Hope VI program.
I also visited Alexandria, and, albeit rapidly, Washington DC.
I made a trip to the city of New Orleans, where I got to see the neighborhood
that was hit hardest by Hurricane Katrina.
6 Syllabus Preparation
The sabbatical favoured the preparation of the syllabus for the graduate
course ‘Politics and Recent Urban Experiences’, which was to be a part of my
activities in the new position I would assume at Unicamp in Brazil immediately
following my stay abroad, as a professor at the Institute of Economics.
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Those activities were essential to accomplishing the goal of the sabbatical as
defined by the USF, which was to enhance the exchange of ideas between
scholars. The sabbatical allowed me to continue old conversations and start
new ones and was an important opportunity to expand theoretical
understanding of the urban process in different social formations.
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With the innumerable demands of everyday academic life, the Urban Studies
Foundation fellowship programme proved to be a rare opportunity to discuss a
doctoral thesis soon after its conclusion, reflect upon its results, and write
about it before moving to the next phase of the research.
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