The Feminist Cities CoLab undertakes interdisciplinary and multimodal research of feminist activism and urban violence in Latin American cities. Funded by the British Academy, we aim to co-produce research with activists and artists from across Latin America, adopting feminist and participatory methodologies to investigate strategies for creating safer cities in the face of everyday and spectacular forms of urban violence. As feminist researchers, we are committed to building just, equitable and anti-oppressive worlds, for all women, men and gender non-conforming people.
The original project team includes Dr. Roxana Pessoa Cavalcanti (University of Brighton), Dr. Simone Ribeiro Gomes (Universidade Federal de Pelotas, Dr. Julia Hartviksen (University of Sussex), Dr. Flavia Santos Medeiros (Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina), Dr. Chandra Morrison (The London School of Economics and Political Science), Dr. Giane Silvestre (Universidade de São Paulo), and Dr. Laurie Denyer Willis (University of Edinburgh).
Meet the Team
Of our international feminist academics & activists!
Project Co-Director
Dr. Roxana Pessoa Cavalcanti
Roxana is a critical social scientist specializing in Southern, postcolonial & decolonial theory, feminist activism, and carcerality. She is co-editor of Journal of Gender-Based Violence and author of A Southern Criminology of Violence, Youth and Policing (Routledge, 2020) and Coeditor of Southern Perspectives on Policing, Security and Social Order (Bristol University Press, 2023).
Project Co-Director
Laurie Denyer Willis
Laurie is an anthropologist at University of Edinburgh with a focus in religious feminisms, global health, & right-wing populism. She is also Director of Edinburgh Center of Medical Anthropology (EdCMA) at the University. Her first book Go with God: Political Exhaustion and Evangelical Possibility in Suburban Brazil (University of California Press, 2023), based on sensory ethnographic fieldwork attuned to religious desire and manipulation, explores Evangelical belief in Rio de Janeiro’s subúrbios.
Project Co-Director
Simone da Silva Ribeiro Gomes
Simone has been an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology and Political Science at the Universidade Federal de Pelotas (UFPel) since 2018. She holds a PhD in Sociology from IESP-UERJ and works with the theories of violence, social movements, & gender studies. She authored Latin American Activism and Routine Violence in the 21st Century (Bristol University Press), to be published in early 2026.
Project Co-Director
Julia Hartviksen
Julia is an adjunct professor of Anthropology and International Development and director of a Masters in Human Rights at the University of Sussex. She completed her doctorate in Gender Studies at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). Her research centers on the intersections between gender, violences, human rights, and the political economy of development. Her latest publication is titled “Testimonies of violence: Rigoberta Menchú and collective experiences of violence in Guatemala."