Category: Favelas

  • Looking at Brazil’s favelas from a Venetian harbour

    The assemblage of Brazilian landscapes during the Venice Biennale of Architecture may be more problematic than it seems.

  • How the issue of poverty shapes online personalities on social media

    In August 2018, I published an article on First Monday about the advent of online self-representations in the context of impoverished communities. I believe this is one of the most under-researched aspects of social media. The extent to which poverty and inequality could mirror different kinds of self-representation, either by selfies or short text posts on the…

  • An image, a favela, and my research

    I won the City University’s Images of Research award with an image that represented my PhD research. The photo shows one of the gigantic sculptures by Projeto Morrinho, an art project that started out from Rio de Janeiro’s favelas. It consists of – literally – a mountain of bricks colourfully painted to represent a favela community, with its tiny streets…

  • It is impressive how the situation has changed in Brazil’s favelas over the last decades. In the 1950s, it was common to find bishops and other charismatic leaders brokering dialogue between favela dwellers, mainstream society, and the state. They used to ask authorities for food support, or helped to halt evictions, often protesting police violence.…