Essays – Maria Khristine Alvarez

Category: Essays

1 Post

ESSAY | Pariah to President

June 27, 2022 — 0 Comments

Peer-reviewed papers

Shatkin, G., Mishra, V. & Alvarez, M.K. (2023) COVID-19 and urban informality: exploring the implications of the pandemic for the politics of planning and inequality, Urban Studies, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/00420980221141181

Saguin, K.K. & Alvarez, M.K. (2022) “Danger zones,” “death zones,” and paradoxes of infrastructural space-making in Manila, Journal of Urban Technology, 29(1), pp. 145-152

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

Book chapter

Manahan, M.A. & Alvarez, M.K. (2020) An atlas of praxes and political possibilities: Radical collective action and urban transformations. In M’barek, M., Velegrakis, G., Hoetmer, R. & Rodrigues, A. (eds.), Cities of Dignity: Urban Transformations Around the World, Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung, Belgium, pp. 49-78.

Public Scholarship

Docena, H., Alvarez, M.K. & Makalintal, J.M. (2022) By failing to transform the Philippines, liberals paved the way for the reactionary right, Jacobin, 2 August. https://jacobin.com/2022/08/philippines-reactionary-right-ferdinand-marcos-jr-liberals-reform

Translated into German and republished in Jacobin Magazin, and into Greek and republished Pass World

Docena, H. & Alvarez, M.K. (2022) Pariah to president, New Left Review – Sidecar, 26 May. https://newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/pariah-to-president

Translated into Spanish and republished in El Salto Diario

Alvarez, M.K., Makalintal, J.M. & H. Docena (2022) The Philippine Left has an opportunity to break the country’s political mold, Jacobin, 1 March. https://jacobin.com/2022/03/philippines-social-democrats-communists-election-marcos-duterte-robredo

Translated into German and republished in Jacobin Magazin

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

I am a Filipina critical urban geographer and urban political ecologist completing a PhD at The Bartlett Development Planning Unit (DPU) at University College London (UCL), researching what I call “resilient city making” in post-Ondoy Metro Manila, the National Capital Region of the Philippines.

This project is part of a larger intellectual agenda, spanning a decade of critical research, that aims to understand and theorise new technologies of displacement, nascent patterns of peripheralisation, and emerging methods of producing urban marginality, to explore pathways for emancipatory urban futures.

In 2018, I won the 2018 GILBERT F. WHITE THESIS AWARD, given by the American Association of Geographers’ (AAG) Hazards, Risks, and Disasters Specialty Group, for my sociology master’s thesis at the University of the Philippines, Diliman. In the same year, I also received a DPU 60th ANNIVERSARY DOCTORAL SCHOLARSHIP AWARD from my current department.

Since starting my PhD in 2018, I have published four peer-reviewed papers in top-tier, game-changing, and leading Q1 journals in urban and housing studies. The first is an original research article in a symposium issue of the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research (IJURR), which earned recognition as a TOP CITED ARTICLE FOR 2019-2020. The second is an original research article in the critical analysis and theory-making section of the inaugural issue of Radical Housing Journal. The third is a commentary in a special issue of Journal of Urban Technology, reflecting on 20 years of a landmark text in critical infrastructure studies. My latest publication is a Debates paper in Urban Studies, which was selected as an Editors’ Featured Article for the period 2023 July 20-October 20.

My other writings include a chapter in the book, “Cities of Dignity: Urban Transformations Around the World”, published by Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung (Brussels), as well as several essays in international magazines dedicated to critical perspectives on bodies in space (The Funambulist) and socialist and leftist politics (Jacobin, Jacobin [Germany], and New Left Review [Sidecar]). Two of these essays have been translated into Spanish and Greek and republished in other outlets.