Maria Evangelina Filippi

Nationality: Argentinean / Italian

Year of entry: 2015

Background:

Maria Evangelina Filippi holds a second Masters in Environment and Sustainable Development from UCL Development Planning Unit (DPU), and an MSc in International Development Studies from the University of Amsterdam. She has been working as a research assistant at UCL Institute for Global Prosperity (IGP) since she graduated at the DPU, supporting London-based projects (Greater London National Park City and Prosperity in East London) and experimenting with co-designed research and innovative participatory tools. Prior to joining the IGP, she worked as a researcher for the EU-funded Chance2Sustain programme in the areas of water governance, participatory (spatial) knowledge, and climate change adaptation in cities in the global South. Her field research experience has mainly focused in urban centres in Latin America, although more recently she has been working in London and Barcelona.

Borne and brought up in Argentina, she has four years of experience in corporate training and knowledge management and a long-stand commitment with grass-root organizations from the global South. She has been supporting TECHO Latin American NGO in fundraising and community development projects since 2008.

Research information

Title: "Understanding disaster risk management as an everyday concept and practice in municipal government policy, planning and management. Learning from the experience of Santa Fe, Argentina, with urban flood risk.”

Key Topics: urban flood risk, disaster risk management, institutionalisation, local governments, medium-sized cities

Abstract
Maria Evangelina Filippi is particularly interested in the challenges and opportunities that anthropogenic climate change poses to urban transformation processes in the global South. Specifically, her research coalesces around an exploration of the process of resilience building in secondary cities in low- and middle-income nations through new approaches to urban planning.

Her research aims at critically explore the extent to which ‘resilience’ might offer a relevant and accurate conceptual framework to inform planning processes and outcomes in urban centres in the global South which are exposed to acute and/or chronic disturbances – particularly to identify key areas of intervention and (re-)orient investments in a context of limited resources.

Supervisors

Funders
UK Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)

Publications and other work

Refereed Journal Articles

Filippi, M. E., M. Hordijk, J. Alegría and J. Rojas, 2014. Knowledge integration: a step forward? Continuities and changes in Arequipa’s water governance system. Environment and Urbanization, 26(2), pp.1-22. Available at: http://eau.sagepub.com/content/early/2014/08/28/0956247814539233

Presentations

M. Hordijk and M.E. Filippi, 2013. Facing the Floods: Responses to increased rainfall in Guarulhos (Brazil) and Arequipa (Peru), Living in Low-income Urban Settlements in an Era of Climate Change: processes, practices, policies and politics, International Conference, Manchester, September 2013
Filippi, M. E., 2012. When knowledge integration is the missing link in resilience to climate change, Resource wealth and regional transformations in Latin America and the Caribbean, CEDLA-NALACS International Conference, Amsterdam, December 2012

Dissertations

Filippi, M. E., 2014. Planning in a complex, changing and uncertain urban reality: the emergence of a resilience planning paradigm in the city of Barcelona. Master dissertation.
Filippi, M. E., 2012. Water related problems: the role of knowledge in the urban water governance system of Arequipa. Master dissertation. Available at: http://dare.uva.nl/cgi/arno/show.cgi?fid=459222
Filippi, M. E., 2007. Large dams and coalitions: a different approach to understand the resurgence of Paraná Medio in the ‘90s. Bachelor dissertation.