I am a critical urban sociologist, geographer, and political activist previously based in Manila, and currently working on a PhD The Bartlett Development Planning Unit (DPU), University College London (UCL). I am the recipient of the 2018 DPU 60th Anniversary Doctoral Scholarship Award, as well as the 2018 Gilbert F. White Thesis Award from the Hazards, Risks and Disasters Specialty Group (HRDSG) of the American Association of Geographers (AAG). I have published theoretical and empirical research articles in the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research (IJURR) and Radical Housing Journal.

My master’s thesis threaded the concepts of territorial stigma, aesthetic governmentality, and territoriality in tracking the genealogy of ‘danger zone’ evictions, charting the production of the discourse of slum evictability in post-Ondoy Manila, and explaining the phenomenon of ‘danger zone’ evictions as a technology of disaster governance.

Building on this previous work, my PhD research examines how ‘danger zone’ evictions, as a consequence and requirement of resilience seeking in post-Ondoy Metro Manila, spatially reconfigure the city region and the peri-urban fringe. As an account of ‘resilient’ city making, this project seeks to critically interrogate the consequences of flood/disaster risk reduction and management and climate adaptation initiatives on the production and reconfiguration of urban and suburban space. It also aims to tell a different story of Metro Manila urban development from 2009 to present, and to theorise the new drivers and new modes of dispossession in vulnerable Southern cities.

My other research interests include urban political ecologies of infrastructure, water, land, and logistics; Southern urban theory; and architecture.

I tweet at @travailzen, and may be reached at alvarez.tin@gmail.com.