Maria Khristine Alvarez

Maria was a recipient of the DPU60 PhD scholarship, covering full fees, a monthly stipend for three years and fieldwork travel.

Maria Khristine (Tin) Alvarez is the recipient of the 2018 Gilbert F. White Thesis Award (Master’s) given by the Hazards, Risks, and Disasters Specialty Group (HRDSG) of the American Association of Geographers (AAG), and the 2018 DPU60 Doctoral Scholarship Award from The Bartlett Development Planning Unit, University College London.

Her PhD research aims to understand how ‘danger zone’ evictions, as both requirement and consequence of resilience seeking in post-Ondoy (2009-present) Metro Manila, spatially reorganise the metropolitan region and its peri-urban fringe. Through a critical genealogy and ethnography of the Metro Manila Flood Management Project and the Informal Settler Families Housing Program, her project aims to weave a critical account of resilient city making, and theorise the new drivers and new modes of dispossession that reconfigure urban and peri-urban space in vulnerable Southern coastal cities

She has published research articles in the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research (IJURR) and the launching issue of Radical Housing Journal (RHJ). Her work has also appeared in The Funambulist. 

Recent publications

Alvarez, M. K. (2019) Benevolent evictions and cooperative housing models in post-Ondoy Manila, Radical Housing Journal, 1(1), pp. 49-68.

Alvarez, M. K. & Cardenas, K. (2019) Evicting slums, ‘building back better’: Resiliency revanchism and disaster risk management in Manila, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 43(2), pp. 227-249. 

Alvarez, M. K. (2018) #OccupyPabahay and the politics of placelessness: Dispatches from Manila, Philippines, The Funambulist, 20, November-December, pp. 4-5.