I am an independent scholar and writer of Spanish and Swedish origins and a mother of a boy and a girl. We live in Paris with a virtual foot in Madrid and occasionally London, and have recently resided in New Delhi (India) for a year. For family reasons, we have strong connections with Mexico as well. My academic expertise centres on four themes: political aesthetics, city images, wartime destruction and post-war reconstruction and uncomfortable legacies (legacies of war and dictatorship). I have conducted research for academic and non-academic institutions in Madrid, Barcelona, London, Boston and Paris on different topics, ranging comparative research on education, urban regeneration practices, and the post-war building industry. My international, interdisciplinary background in the social sciences and the humanities includes a PhD in Sociology/Cities Programme from the London School of Economics (2009), an MA in Humanities and Social Thought from the New York University (2004) and a BA (5-year degree) in Political Science from Universidad Complutense de Madrid (2001). I also undertook courses in political science and art history at Uppsala University (1995-96) and Lund University (2002), and social research methods at the LSE (2005-06).
As a writer, I contribute analysis and opinion articles to the press and essays for other non-academic media on current social, political and cultural topics. My articles have appeared, among others, in Spanish El País, El Huffington Post and El Correo; Argentinian Clarín, and Swedish Dagens Nyheter. I also publish my own blog, and give occasional talks and conferences.
As an independent researcher I seek developing cultural, social and historical approaches to the city and the built environment. I possess a solid research and publications profile in the fields of urban, social and visual history and heritage (see Publications), including policy reports on heritage. I am particularly interested in the aesthetic dimension of politics, and am keen to develop projects that combine research on social and cultural issues with art. I have been involved in several artistic projects and installations, having conceived and coordinated the project Femmes et WC.
Prior to my free-lance career, I taught in the Department of Sociology at the LSE, and later collaborated with the Department of Architectural Composition in the Higher Technical School of Architecture of Madrid (ETSAM). I subsequently worked for the project ‘Constructing Post-War Britain: building workers’ stories, 1950-1970’ as a research fellow in the Centre for the Study of the Production of the Built Environment (ProBE) at the University of Westminster. From February 2013 and until August 2014, I was a full-time mother. Since September 2014, I work part-time as a mother and part-time as a researcher and writer.