Dr. Nikolai Alvarado received funding to establish the Latin American and Caribbean Cities Collective at the University of Illinois, in collaboration with Dr. Magdalena Novoa, Assistant Professor in the Department of Urban and Regional Planning.
The LAC Cities Collective will serve as a collaborative space for faculty, students, and community members dedicated to promoting discussion and reflection on the multiple forms of urbanization and urbanism that shape the everyday lives of the majority of people living in the Latin American and Caribbean region. It aims to highlight the experiential knowledge of ordinary people and to engage with creative and radical methodologies, pluriversal and decolonial perspectives, plebian-popular, feminist and insurgent initiatives that support the reproduction of life across diverse urban contexts.
The collective also looks to build bridges, extend conversations, and learn from/with Migrant, Black, Indigenous, and Latinx urbanisms across all of the Americas. The LAC Cities Collective will position the University of Illinois as a leader in the study of Latin American and Caribbean urban processes through research, pedagogical initiatives and curriculum development, and public programming.
The proposal submitted by professors Alvarado and Novoa was one of the initiatives selected for funding through a grant that the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (CLACS) received from the U.S. Department of Education's Title VI National Resource Centers program.
Read full CLACS announcement
The Collective will launch this fall with the hosting of multiple on-campus speakers and workshops.
Fall 2022 Speakers:
Thursday, September 15th
6:00 p.m. in Siebel Center for Design, Room 1002
Dr. Catalina Ortiz, University College London
Disobedient Urban Research: Provocations for Setting a Decolonial Agenda
[event listing]
Monday, November 7th
5 p.m., Location TBA
Claudio Alvarado Lincopi, Centro de Estudios Interculturales e Indígenas (CIIR), Chile
Santiagónico: ciudad barroca y la producción plebeya del espacio público
(Santiagónico: Baroque City and the Plebeian Production of Public Space)
[event listing]