She is a principal researcher on a full-time basis at CHAIA - Center for Art History and Artistic Research at the University of Évora (PT), within the scope of the Program-Contract between the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) and the University of Évora, in the framework of the Individual Scientific Employment Stimulus -5th Edition. She is the research coordinator of the project “Land Theatre. Contextual and participatory performative arts for rural landscape regeneration. Three case studies in the Euroregion Alentejo-Algarve-Andalusia” (2022.04361.CEECIND, 2023-29). The research aims to transform three natural protected spaces in the Southern Iberian Peninsula (Guadiana Valley Natural Park- Alentejo; Caldeirão Mountain Range Natura 2000 – Algarve; Aroche Peaks Natural Park – Huelva) into laboratories for the active involvement and participation of artists and cultural agents in close contact with rural residents and actors for the safeguarding and resignification of their cultural landscape heritage. For each case study, a methodology of performative arts’ co-creation (artists-community) will be developed, based on a two-way journey: experiencing the “landscape as theatre” and bringing the “landscape into the theatre”.
Her Post-doc research, "The Multicultural Somatic Urban Landscape. Identities, Heritage and Cultural Tourism in the Immigrate Communities of the Historical Urban Centres of Lisbon and Barcelona" (2015-21), was developed at CHAIA, U Évora with funding from the FCT Portugal and the European Social Fund (POCH/UE/PT) (SFRH/BPD/101156/2014). This research enquired about the identity and intangible urban landscape heritage of the historical districts of Mouraria (Lisbon) and Raval (Barcelona), observing how communities are involved in the place-making processes of identity construction. Through a participatory and artistic-based research methodology, several transdisciplinary art laboratories (music, plastic arts, dance and performance) were developed, addressed to residents. The observation of how communities relate to their daily urban environment was focused on the study of body-world phenomenological experiences, site-specific urban explorations and experimental cartographies (www.somaticlandscape.com). For both case studies, collaborations and partnerships were established with artists, socio-cultural associations, public institutions, local governments and Universities (U Barcelona (ES), and U Chichester (UK)). The project received additional grants from OSIC, Catalonia Culture Department grant (CLT019/20/000154), and Next Stop Consortium grant - CMLisbon, Aga Khan Foundation, FAMI (PT/2017/FAMI/210).
She holds a Master’s in Architecture from ETSA Barcelona, UP Catalonia (ES); a Post-graduation in Landscape Intervention and Heritage Management (Natural, Cultural and Touristic), Department of Geography, U A Barcelona (ES); and a PhD in Landscape Theory, History and Urban Culture by the Faculty of Architecture, TU Eindhoven (NL) (2007). Her PhD research was conducted under the supervision of tutors from Princeton University, Wageningen University, TUDelft and L’Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales. She developed a transdisciplinary and intercultural research in the field of landscape perception of the urban environment. This phenomenological enquiry involved interrogating topics related with landscape theory, urban culture, psychology of perception, and visual arts and media, both for the European and Chinese urban context.
She has fifteen years of technical and professional experience in architectural and urban planning firms and more than twenty years of teaching and research academic experience, involved in the supervision and co-supervisor of Master and PhD Thesis, invited at several national and international universities and other cultural institutions. She has been principal at the office StudioMEB, Architecture, Urbanism and Landscape (2009-11), and director of the research international project GreenEngines, Productive Landscapes for self-sustainable Cities (2009-11) with three case studies in Spain, Portugal and Turkey. She has been a Lecturer of Landscape Theory, Landscape and Architectural Design at TUE (NL) (2000-07), Assistant Professor in the Master of Architecture, ISMAT, Lusofona University (PT) (2010-15), involved as coordinator of the Scientific Unit of Urban Planning and Design (2012-14) and the Research Group Rurality in Algarve (2012-13) and visiting researcher at GRAPA (Research Group on Anthropology and Artistic Practices, U Barcelona) (2018-20). Since 2014 She has been affiliated as a PhD integrated researcher at the Unit Landscape and Aesthetics of Landscape at CHAIA – U Évora.
Portugal