Authors

Andrea Rigon, Joana Dabaj, Hanna Baumann

Dr Andrea Rigon is an Associate Professor at UCL’s Development Planning Unit whose research work focuses on how power relations affect the participation of different people and social groups in decision-making processes that have an impact on their lives. Concerned with processes of citizen participation at various scales from neighbourhood to global levels, he is particularly interested in how residents’ participation is managed within urban development projects, particularly in informal settlements, and what are the effects on in/equality and social exclusion. His ongoing research involves informal settlement and humanitarian actions in Sierra Leone, Lebanon, and Nigeria.

Joana Dabaj is an architect and urban designer. She is co-founder and principal coordinator at CatalyticAction, a charity based in London that works to empower communities through strategic and innovative spatial interventions. She has valuable experience in architecture in development, sustainable design, cultural heritage, migration, and human rights in the Middle East. Her recent work revolves around working closely with displaced and host communities in Lebanon to develop inclusive educational spaces; this includes participatory planning, design, and implementation of playgrounds, public spaces, and schools.


Hanna Baumann is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the Bartlett, University College London. Having completed her PhD on the infrastructures of im/mobility in East Jerusalem at the Cambridge Centre for Urban Conflicts Research in 2017, her current work examines the role of infrastructures in processes of urban exclusion and participation of refugees and other non-citizens in Beirut and Berlin: How do public services influence urban politics on embodied, affective, and symbolic registers? How are collective claims made around the common goods distributed by urban networks?

ARTICLES BY Andrea Rigon, Joana Dabaj, Hanna Baumann