Research Group
Research Group
Research Group
DINÂMIA'CET-IUL
Centre for Socioeconomic and Territorial Studies
Integrated Researcher
Ana Silva Fernandes
research interests
Urban policies, spatial justice, social inclusion, informal settlements and peri-urban areas, planning within scarcity, developing countries, territorial asymmetries, participation and heritage
Short Bio
Ana Silva Fernandes (Porto, 1982). Architect and researcher, with postgraduate studies on architectural heritage, and a PhD thesis on policies for improvement of informal areas, focusing on African territories. She has been undertaking applied research both in the Portuguese context and in developing countries, being interested in urban policies, spatial justice, social inclusion, informal settlements and peri-urban areas, poverty reduction, territorial asymmetries, participation and heritage. She is nowadays a post-doctoral researcher on the impacts of the infrastructural network in the transformation of the territory in Mozambique, as well as on participatory policies for overcoming the social asymmetries in its access, and for the improvement of deprived areas. This research is hosted by Dinâmia’CET – ISCTE-IUL (Lisbon, Portugal) and CEDH-FAPF-UEM (Maputo, Mozambique).She is also a member of the research project “Coast to Coast – Late Portuguese Infrastructural Development in Continental Africa (Angola and Mozambique): critical and historical analysis and postcolonial assessment”, coordinated by Ana Vaz Milheiro and hosted by ISCTE-IUL.She has worked on regional studies at CEAU-FAUP, where she participated in the analysis, cartography and guidelines for tackling recent socio-spatial challenges in the northwest of Portugal.Experience in policy analysis, spatial analysis (GIS, statistical data, architectural surveying), database management and cartography. She participates in university classes, theses supervisions, national and international conferences and journals.
research project at dinâmia'cet-Iscte
The reflection on the links between colonialism and (under)development has focused on relations of causality between colonial heritage and the perpetuation of disparities, but much less about the means that dictated this social and territorial reproduction of poverty, or on the forms as the colonial legacy is related to practices not regulated by the administration, either during the colonizing process, and in the independent nation, especially in the relationship between colonial structures and informal settlements.This research, focusing on Mozambique and recognizing public works as elementsstructuring of the territory fundamental to the quality of life of the population, proposes not only to debate the patterns of urban and socioeconomic transformation of the last decades to the present, but specially to discuss and test practices of reconfiguration of the roles of the various stakeholders - residents, pubic management, academia - in the current spatial transformation process and in the design models of co-responsibility for qualification of infrastructures, public space and self-produced constructions.
Link to DINÂMIA'CET-IUL identifying mission:
This individual research establishes contact points with the project Coast to Coast - Late Portuguese Infrastructural Development in Continental Africa (Angola and Mozambique): Critical and Historical Analysis and Postcolonial Assessment, coordinated by Ana Vaz Milheiro, financed by FCT [ ref.PTDC / ATP-AQI / 0742/2014] and hosted by DC.
Main publications
S. FERNANDES, Ana Silva (2017) “Housing Policies for the Urban Poor: The Importance of an Interdisciplinary Approach. A View from São Tomé”, in Mendes, Maria Manuela; Sá, Teresa; Cabral, João (eds.) Architecture and the Social Sciences: Inter- and Multidisciplinary Approaches between Society and Space, Springer, pp.219-233.
FERNANDES, Ana Silva (2015) “Entre remediar e solucionar. A estruturação e a participação como meios de gestão da escassez e ruptura do ciclo de pobreza. São Tomé e Príncipe como laboratório”, PhD Thesis, Faculty of Architecture of the University of Porto.
FERNANDES, Ana Silva; NASCIMENTO, Augusto (2015) “’Dream cities’ in Africa: polemics around Expu Gongá, the ‘New City of São Tomé’”, in MILHEIRO, Ana Vaz, et al, Proceedings: Optimistic Suburbia – Large housing complexes for the middle-class beyond Europe, Lisbon, 20-22 May, pp.196-214.
FERNANDES, Ana Silva; TRAVASSO, Nuno; SÁ, Manuel Fernandes (2014) “The struggle of the invisibles: social policies and the urban poor. Planning within scarcity in the Northwest of Portugal”, EURAU 2014 - Proceedings of the 7º European Symposium on Research in Architecture and Urban Design, Istanbul.
FERNANDES, Ana Silva; SÁ, Manuel Fernandes; PÓVOAS, Rui Fernandes (2012) “Bridging the urban divide between the informal and the planned city. The African microstate of São Tomé and Príncipe as case-study.”, in EURAU 2012: Proceedings of the 6º European Symposium on Research in Architecture and Urban Design, Porto.
Main projects
- Member of the research project “Coast to Coast – Late Portuguese Infrastructural Development in Continental Africa (Angola and Mozambique): critical and historical analysis and postcolonial assessment”, coordinated by Ana Vaz Milheiro and hosted by ISCTE-IUL. |
- Member of the research team of the project “Orientações Estratégicas de Coerência Territorial: Arco Metropolitano Noroeste” (Strategic Orientations for Territorial Cohesion: Northwestern Metapolitan Arch), commissioned by CCDR-N to CEAU-FAUP and coordinated by Nuno Portas, Manuel Fernandes de Sá and Teresa Calix.
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