Melissa is a PhD student in Human Geography at the University of Manchester, UK and an Associate Fellow with ENTITLE. She holds a BA in Geography and Economics from McGill University, Canada (2001), a Graduate Diploma in Community Economic Development from Concordia University, Canada (2003) and an MSc in Building and Urban Design in Development from the Bartlett, University College London (2009). She has nine years of experience working as a coordinator, consultant and/or teacher in Canada and internationally with governments, universities, non-governmental and community organisations. Melissa was a Commonwealth Scholar at UCL and is now funded by the Economic and Social Research Council and the Sustainable Consumption Institute at the University of Manchester.
Her research investigates the insurgent practices and forms of being-in-common of anti-eviction platforms emerging in response to the multi-scalar political economic dynamics affecting housing in Spain, and to assess the role of such practices and forms in creating urban commons. She seeks to more deeply understand the micro level, lived experience of people in relation to their past and current housing as well as to specific financial entities, towards gaining a more nuanced picture of the macro dynamics of the financialisation of housing in Spain; to understand how evicted households' subjectivities have been transformed through anti-eviction struggles; and to reflect on how insurgent practices, in particular blocking evictions and occupying empty buildings, relate to constructing collective, contested socio-ecological configurations.
Financialisation, commons, being-in-common, social movements, production of space, urban political economy, urban political ecology.