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Dr Mara Nogueira

Positions held:
  • Senior Lecturer, School of Social Sciences
Address

Room B01, 32 Tavistock Square

Email
  • Overview

    Overview

    Biography

    Mara is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Social Sciences. She is an urban geographer with an interdisciplinary background in Geography and Economics and research expertise on urbanisation in the Global South with a focus on socio-spatial inequalities and grassroots mobilisation in Brazil. Her scholarship is committed to identifying the roots and ways of addressing socio-spatial inequalities with an aim to promote social justice.

    She joined Birkbeck in 2020, having held a fellowship previously at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

    Highlights

    Qualifications

    • PhD in Human Geography and Urban Studies, LSE, UK, 2017
    • MSc in Economics, Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil, 2012
    • BSc in Economics, Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil, 2008

    Administrative responsibilities

    • Programme Director of the BSc Geography and International Development
    • Research lead - Geography

    Honours and awards

    • Visting Fellowship, Department of Geography and Environment, LSE , September 2024

    ORCID

    0000-0003-1014-9477
  • Research

    Research

    Research overview

    My current research lies at the intersection of critical development studies and postcolonial urban theory with a focus on how urban inequalities are (re)produced and challenged. I am interested in state-society relationships with an emphasis on marginalised populations in Brazil. My work pays attention to how urban policy may (re)produce or mitigate inequalities - along the lines of class, gender, and race – as well as how distinct groups organise to contest, resist, and shape policymaking and, consequentially, the city. My research can be broadly organised in three agendas.

    First Research Agenda: Popular Economies

    My third research agenda centres on the multiscalar geographies of popular economies, with recent attention to China’s growing influence in Latin America. Between 2018 and 2023, I investigated the local dimensions of Belo Horizonte’s informal economy with a focus on the impacts of exclusionary urban policies and street vendors’ resistance against displacement and for the right to the city centre.

    My ongoing project, “Globalisation from below: livelihoods, trade, and transnationalism in Brazil’s informal economy,” investigates how Chinese migration and trade circuits impact livelihoods within Brazil’s informal economy, reflecting China’s growing role in global development dynamics. Supported by a British Academy/ODA International Interdisciplinary Research Projects grant (PI, £289,430), this project is an interdisciplinary collaboration with colleagues at the Federal University of Minas Gerais in Economics and Architecture. It explores the role of Chinese migrants in transnationalising the local informal economy in Belo Horizonte, with a focus on cross-cultural relations and gendered dynamics. The research will engage participants in an artistic-cultural collaborative process and disseminate collective produced materials and findings through an arts exhibition. Further outputs include four academic papers, a podcast series and an open access monograph entitled “Transnational Informal Economy Atlas”. The project will contribute critical insights into China’s developmental influence, and I plan to further this research agenda in the future by expanding the scope to other Latin American countries.

    Second Research Agenda: Urban food (in)justice

    A second avenue of my research investigates food (in)justice in urban Brazil, as part of the British Academy-funded project “Engineering Food: Infrastructure Exclusion and ‘Last Mile’ Delivery in Brazilian Favelas” (2020–2023). As Co-Investigator, I collaborated with partners at the LSE Latin America and Caribbean Centre and INSPER (Brazil). This project examined the intersections of Brazil’s Zero Hunger policy and local food security initiatives, comparing Belo Horizonte—renowned for its innovative urban food policies—with São Paulo, Brazil’s largest city marked by stark inequalities. Through fieldwork in five low-income neighbourhoods (informal settlements), we explored how uneven access to urban infrastructure shapes food (in)security and documented grassroots initiatives addressing scarcity and exclusion amid the Covid-19 pandemic. The research emphasized the role of sustainable urban policy in fostering food justice and mitigating socio-spatial inequalities.

    Watch this short documentary about the research: The Last Mile: Exclusion and Food Insecurity in Urban Brazil


    Third Research Agenda: Urban Governance

    I engaged with this theme in my PhD research (completed in 2017 at LSE), which examined conflicts between citizens with the state to shape city-making in Belo Horizonte/Brazil in the years leading up to the 2014 World Cup. The thesis examined how urban struggles in the context of Brazil’s re-democratisation shaped the creation of urban participatory channels. In this context, it demonstrated that different groups – informal workers, informal residents and middle-class dwellers – were unevenly empowered to engage with the state and secure gains. I have published three papers from my doctoral research in internationally recognised journals (International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Urban Studies, and Environment and Planning D). The research contributed to debates on urban policy by presenting an innovative critique of the limits of Brazil’s internationally recognised and acclaimed participatory model.

    Research Centres and Institutes

    Research projects

    Engineering food: Infrastructure exclusion and 'last mile' delivery in Brazilian favelas.

    Abstract

    Brazilian favelas are vibrant spaces, where ‘mom and pop’ shops offer a variety of products. Yet, supposedly, these same neighbourhoods are also identified as ‘food deserts’ and ‘food swamps’, where the absence of affordable ‘healthy food’ options is accompanied by a profusion of cheaper ‘unhealthy’ alternatives. Motivated by this apparent contradiction, this project examines the supply chains and social networks that stand behind the availability, accessibility and consumption of fresh food in Brazilian favelas in two cities, Belo Horizonte and São Paulo.

    Funded by
    British Academy
    Outcomes

    Globalisation from below: livelihoods, trade and transnationalism in Brazil’s informal economy.

    Abstract


    With a focus on the informal economy in Belo Horizonte, this project will delineate the everyday cross-cultural and economic practices that produce globalisation from below. Through three key strands, the research will explore economic interactions and conflicts between Chinese migrants and local street vendors; investigate emerging social relations and forms of belonging; and analyse socio-cultural and economic transformations in urban spaces. A collaborative methodology will engage participants in an artistic-cultural process creating spaces for dialogue and cooperation. The project will produce an exhibition and a Transnational Informal Economy Atlas that reveal the complex ways in which globalisation from below connects and transforms urban livelihoods, spaces and societies.

    Funded by
    British Academy

    Post doctoral staff

    • Jiawei Zhao
  • Supervision and teaching

    Supervision and teaching

    Supervision

    Supervisions within Birkbeck:
    3

    Current doctoral researchers

    • AVINAY YADAV
      Nature of supervision:
      Principal Supervisor, onwards
    • DIMA ALHAJ HUSSEIN
      Nature of supervision:
      Joint Principal Supervisor, onwards
      Title of thesis:
      Built Heritage and Modernity: Urbanism and the Bombardment of Damascus 1925
    • POOJA KAMALAKSHA KINI
      Nature of supervision:
      Joint Principal Supervisor, onwards

    Teaching

    Module convenor

    • Cities in the Global South (L6/L7)
    • Research Methods (L7)

     

    Teaching modules

    • Research Methods (SSGE083Z7)
    • Urban Sustainability (SSGE126S7)
    • Crossing Borders (SSSS001S3)
  • Publications

    Publications

    Article

    Book Section