Dr Cecilia Dinardi

Dr Cecilia Dinardi is a sociologist interested in cultural policies, heritage, cities, urban regeneration and creative methodologies. She was awarded a three-year Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in an international funding call by the Urban Studies Foundation (2013-2016). Based at City, University of London (Centre for Culture & the Creative Industries), she conducted research into urban governance, cultural policies and creative cities in the global South, particularly Argentina & Brazil, with Professor Andy Pratt.

She has also received the Rising Star Engagement Award by the British Academy, as part of which she organised the Urban Cultural Policy & Creativity Platform, a series of engagement events bringing together international cultural policymakers, scholars and practitioners.

Previously she worked as a Research Officer (2009-2011) at City, where she managed the Researching Cultural & Creative Industries in London (RCCIL) database, aimed at making research more accessible to policy-makers, academics and service-providers.

Dr Dinardi's research explores ways of connecting the formal domain of cultural policy making with the informal world of ordinary practices in the cultural sector. Focusing on both policy and grassroots cultural interventions in Buenos Aires & Rio de Janeiro, her project addresses existing limitations in the literature on creative cities by exploring alternative ways of understanding culture and creativity in contexts of urban segregation, social inequality, poor-quality public spaces and growing informal settlements. She is particularly interested in understanding the social and political dimensions of the cultural economy of informal settlements.

She has been a member of the Creative Lab: Social Change through Culture & Creativity, funded by the AHRC Newton Fund, where she coordinated and participated of collaborative, interdisciplinary projects in the creative field with scholars, artists and activists from Brazil & the UK