Marcelo Lopes de Souza
Marcelo Lopes de Souza is a professor of socio-spatial development and political ecology at the Department of Geography of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, where he co-ordinates the Núcleo de Pesquisas sobre Desenvolvimento Sócio-Espacial/NuPeD (Research Centre on Socio-Spatial Development). He received the first prize of the German Society of Research on Latin America in 1994 for his PhD thesis (which was published in Germany) about the urban question in Brazil, and the Jabuti Award (this prize is given every year to Brazil’s best literary and scientific works by  the Brazilian Book Chamber) for his book "O desafio metropolitano" ("The Metropolitan Challenge") in 2001. His book "Fobópole: O medo generalizado e a militarização da questão urbana" ("Phobopolis: Generalised Fear and the Militarisation of the Urban Question"), published in 2008, was nominated for the Jabuti Award in 2009. Intellectual Contribution. He pioneered the study of spatiality and the social production of space from an ‘autonomist’ perspective (mainly inspired by Cornelius Castoriadis’s political-philosophical work) as early as in the 1980s. Marcelo Lopes de Souza regards himself as a "'libertário"' (left-libertarian). From his viewpoint, the (left-)libertarian thought and praxis  encompasses not only anarchism (or, as he prefers, ‘classical anarchism’) - second half of the 19th century and first half of the 20th century - and neo-anarchism - from the second half of the 20th century onwards (for instance, Murray Bookchin) -, but also ‘autonomist libertarian’ authors (such as Castoriadis) and movements (such as Mexican Zapatistas, a large part of Argentine ‘"piqueteros",’ and so on). His research projects have covered several themes related to the interdisciplinary field of urban studies and, more recently, to the interface of urban studies and political ecology. He has contributed to critical environmental geography and political ecology (especially  urban political ecology) from a left-libertarian perspective, focusing above all on the problems of environmental injustice and the conservative (or conservatively instrumentalised) discourses about environmental risk and protection. Studies. He studied geography and urban sociology in Brazil in the 1980s, and received his PhD degree in geography (Nebenfach [minor]: political science) from the University of Tübingen (Germany) in 1993. Career. He acted as a visiting researcher at the Geography Department of the University of Tübingen (1996 and 2000/2001) and at the Geography Department of the Royal Holloway College, University of London (1999), as well as a visiting professor at  the Habitat Unit of the Technical University of Berlin (2005), at the Graduate Programme on Latin American Studies of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (2008), at the Europa-Universität Viadrina in Frankfurt [Oder] (2009-2010), at the Colegio de Geografía of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (2012) and at the Department of Political Science and International Relations of the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (2013-2014). Since the mid-1990s, Marcelo Lopes de Souza has acted as a coordinator or co-coordinator of a number of research projects, which have covered themes such as: urban violence and the ‘militarisation of  the urban question’ in different countries; potentialities, limits and problems of ‘participative urban planning and management’; the spatial practices of emancipative social movements in Brazil, Argentina, Mexico and South Africa; and environmental (in)justice and urban-environmental struggles in Brazil. He founded the Rede de Pesquisadores em Geografia (Socio)Ambiental (Network of Research on [https://geografia-socio-ambiental.webnode.com [Socio-<nowiki>]</nowiki>Environmental Geography]) in 2017, whose focus is on critical environmental geography and political ecology. Writings and participation in editorial boards. Marcelo Lopes de Souza published eleven books and more than one hundred papers and book chapters in different languages (Portuguese, English, German, Spanish, French and  Turkish) covering subjects such as spatial theory, participation in urban planning, movements theory (focusing especially on the spatial dimension of urban and environmental movements), urban ‘utopias’/alternative visions, urban problems, and urban political ecology. His books include, besides the ones previously mentioned, "Mudar a cidade" ("Changing the City", 2002, 11th edition 2016) and "A prisão e a ágora" ("The Prison and the" "Ágora", 2006), among others. He is one of the editors of the prestigious Brazilian urban studies journal "Cidades", and is associate editor of the international journal"City" (published by Routledge) as well. He belongs to the Advisory Board of the  journals "sub\urban"."zeitschrift für kritische stadtforschung" (Germany; since 2012), "ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies" (UK; since 2016) and "Territorios" (Argentina; since 2017). He further belonged to the Advisory Board of "Antipode: A Radical Journal of Geography" (published by Wiley-Blackwell) between 2010 and 2104. Activism. Marcelo Lopes de Souza has collaborated with urban movements organisations since the 1980s, especially with different organisations of Brazil’s movement (‘roofless’ workers’ movement, urban counterpart to the better-known landless workers’ movement) in different ways, from "'recherche-action"' to activists in the framework of study groups and political seminars to the organisation  of public events. More recently, his contributions as an activist have been mainly related to the struggle against environmental injustice in Brazilian cities.