Dr Cecilia Dinardi
Staff details
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 and the Creative Industries), she conducted research into urban governance, cultural policies and creative cities in the global South, particularly Argentina and 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 and 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 and 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 and 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 and 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 and the UK.
She completed a PhD in Sociology at the London School of Economics and Political Science (2013), a MSc in Culture and Society at the LSE (2007), and a BSc in Sociology at the Universidad de Buenos Aires (2005). Through these studies, she conducted research into three main areas: culture and city branding, culture and creative industries and culture-led urban regeneration. Her doctoral thesis, under the supervision of Prof Paul Gilroy, examined the politics of culture-led urban regeneration and the various contestations over the meanings of culture and heritage, looking at the past, present and future of a monumental building in central Buenos Aires through a multi-methods engagement with its material transformation into a cultural quarter. Her research received funding from several organisations, such as the LSE, the University of London, the Leche Trust and the Foundation for Urban and Regional Studies (FURS), among others.
Dr Dinardi provides expert advice to the ESRC, academic journals, various Ministries of Culture, the UK’s National Commission for UNESCO and other international organisations. She is a member of the ESRC Peer Review College.
Research Interests
Research interests
- Cities and urban regeneration
- Culture, heritage and memory
- Cultural policies and creative industries
- Grassroots/informal creative economy
- Creative, qualitative methods
- Latin American cities
Teaching
Cecilia teaches in the MA in Arts Administration and Cultural Policy and oversees the MPhil/PhD programme as the Postdraduate Research Convenor. Before joining Goldsmiths, she taught at City, University of London (Department of Sociology's modules: Culture and Creative Industries, Arts and Popular Culture; Researching London; Introduction to Sociology) and at the London School of Economics and Political Science (Department of Sociology's module Sociological Analysis).
Other activities
Dr Dinardi has also worked as a Consultant on cultural policy and research for BOP Consulting, advising governments and international organisations on cultural strategies and sustainable urban regeneration and conducting research on Latin American cities for the World Cities Culture Forum (WCCF) global initiative. She is also an Associate Researcher of the Laboratório de Antropologia da Arquitectura e Espaços (LAARES), Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, and has been a member of the NYLON international research network for three years. She has worked for the Government of the City of Buenos Aires (in the areas of tourism development and sports), coordinated pollsters teams for a range of consultancies in Argentina, including the National Census Bureau, and has been a permanent member of the Sociology of Culture Team at the Instituto de Investigaciones Gino Germani (IIGG), Universidad de Buenos Aires.
Publications
Edited Book
Hall, S; Fernandez, M and Dinardi, Cecilia, eds. 2010. Writing Cities: How do views shape words? How do words shape cities? London: London School of Economics and Political Science.. ISBN ISSN 2042-4361
Book Section
Dinardi, Cecilia. 2017. The building of creative hubs: urban regeneration, recovered industrial factories and cultural production in Buenos Aires and Rio de Janeiro. In: Rosalind Gill and Tarek Virani, eds. Creative Hubs in Question: Place, Space and Work in the Creative Economy. Palgrave.
Dinardi, Cecilia. 2016. Reconstruyendo el pasado, representando la Nación: el bicentenario argentino y la recuperación del espacio público tras la crisis de 2001. In: C Levey; D Ozarow and C Wylde, eds. De la crisis de 2001 al kirchnerismo: Cambios y Continuidades. Buenos Aires: Prometeo Libros. ISBN 9789875747654
Dinardi, Cecilia. 2014. Assembling the Past, Performing the Nation: The Argentine Bicentenary and Regaining of Public Space in the Aftermath of the 2001 Crisis. In: C Levey; D Ozarow and C Wylde, eds. Argentina since the 2001 Crisis: Recovering the Past, Reclaiming the Future. Palgrave MacMillan.
Dinardi, Cecilia. 2013. Trabajo Postal y Arquitectura Pública. Funciones e Imaginarios de Modernidad. In: A Collado, ed. Arquitectura Moderna y Estado en Argentina: Edificios para Correos y Telecomunicaciones (1947-1955). CEDODAL; Facultad de Arquitectura, Diseño y Urbanismo UNL, Argentina.
Dinardi, Cecilia. 2010. Writing urban stories from the walls of a building: The case of the Post and Telecommunications Palace in Buenos Aires. In: S Hall; M Fernandez and Cecilia Dinardi, eds. Writing Cities: How do view shape words? How do words shape cities? London School of Economics and Political Science.
Article
Dinardi, Cecilia. 2019. Creativity, informality and cultural work in Rio de Janeiro's favelas. International Journal of Cultural Studies, 22(2), pp. 248-263. ISSN 1367-8779
Mbaye, Jenny and Dinardi, Cecilia. 2019. Ins and outs of the cultural polis: Informality, culture and governance in the global South. Urban Studies, 56(3), pp. 578-593. ISSN 0042-0980
Acuto, Michele; Dinardi, Cecilia and Marx, Colin. 2019. Special Issue: Transcending (in)formal urbanism. Urban Studies, 56(3), pp. 475-487. ISSN 0042-0980
Dinardi, Cecilia. 2016. Cultural Producers and Social Change in Latin America - Book Review. Journal of Latin American Studies, 48(3), pp. 662-664. ISSN 0022-216X
Dinardi, Cecilia. 2016. Creative precariousness, urban discontent and cultural networks: An introduction to a public lecture with Néstor García Canclini. International Journal of Cultural Studies, ISSN 1367-8779
Dinardi, Cecilia. 2015. Cities for sale: Contesting city branding and cultural policies in Buenos Aires. Urban Studies, 54(1), pp. 85-101. ISSN 0042-0980
Dinardi, Cecilia. 2015. Unsettling the role of culture as panacea: The politics of culture-led urban regeneration in Buenos Aires. City, Culture and Society, 6(2), pp. 9-18. ISSN 1877-9166
Dinardi, Cecilia. 2014. Why disused London tube stations should not just be sold to the highest bidder. The Conversation,
Film/Video
Dinardi, Cecilia. 2017. Bhering, the making of an arts factory - English subtitles.
