Dr. Claudia Fonseca Alfaro

Claudia is Project Researcher at the Institute for Urban Research, Malmö University, Sweden. She is a postcolonial and feminist urban scholar with expertise in Latin America who is interested in studying the way urbanization unfolds and how global capitalism actually happens on the ground in the inconspicuous places of the global South. She carries out this work by analyzing how space is produced at the intersection of power, discourse, and imaginaries. Her research interests include global commodity chains, comparative urbanism, and the relationship between infrastructure and racial capitalism. Her latest publication is Producing Mayaland: Colonial Legacies and the Unfolding of Global Capitalism, a volume within the Antipode Book Series.

During her visiting fellowship at the UI, Claudia plans to focus on the project Smart cities in the Global South: Contributing to Cosmopolitan Urban Studies. This is a study of two smart city cases in Mexico – Guadalajara Ciudad Creativa Digital and Tequila Pueblo Mágico Inteligente. The project aims to unpack how smart is being understood at the local level, investigate the visions of utopia being developed, and explore the impacts on everyday life. The project is generously funded by the Swedish Research Council for Sustainable Development (FORMAS).