I am an Assistant Professor in the Political & Economic Geographies (PEG) programme group at the Department of Human Geography, Planning, and International Development, and a member of the multidisciplinary network ‘The Human Factor in New Technologies’ at the Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences (FMG). Since 2025, I have been a co-director of the Centre for Urban Studies (CUS) at the Amsterdam Institute of Social Science Research (AISSR).

My research sits at the intersection of critical human geography and media studies, examining how digital devices and infrastructures shape socio-spatial politics and inequalities at different scales. Over the last few years, I have taken this focus to studies of urban policing and (in)security, transnational citizenship, and illegalised urban economies, in and beyond Brazil - my home country. Most recently, this agenda has expanded to encompass the geopolitics of submarine data cables, with a focus on the digital infrastructural landscapes of the South Atlantic. Across these topics, I approach situated technological politics, practices, and knowledges as entry points into persistent and emerging geographies of power, drawing on feminist and postcolonial theoretical traditions. 

Cable geopolitics: Situating digital infrastructural sovereignty beyond US-China polarisation (2024-2029)

Team: Valentina Carraro, Carolina Maurity Frossard, Virginie Mamadouh, Ouejdane Sabbah (PhD candidate) and Pablo Zagt Hernández (PhD candidate) 

Digital platforms, devices, and infrastructures play an increasingly prominent role in national geopolitical agendas. Amid the enduring centrality of US-based tech companies within computing networks and China's growing influence over different layers of the global stack, many states are grappling with how to assert their digital infrastructural sovereignty. As they try to materialise their digitalisation projects, states are required to navigate increasingly tangled webs of global digital power. Our project seeks to understand how digital infrastructural sovereignty is performed and negotiated beyond US-China disputes, at the global, regional, and local levels. With a focus on subsea and subterrestrial cables – critical infrastructures that operate across borders – we draw on different regional contexts to ask: How do state and non-state actors negotiate their digital infrastructural sovereignty amidst rising tensions between East and West, and persisting geoeconomic asymmetries between the North and the South? We approach this question through different entry points, zooming in on the circulating imaginaries and situated practices that are enrolled in making, maintaining, and governing transnational fibre optic cable networks. 

This project is funded by the Amsterdam Institute of Social Science Research (AISSR) through a reduced version of the Starter Grant scheme, affected by the 2025 cuts to the science and education budget. 

Digital Geographies of Urban Drug Markets (2025-2030)

Team: Rivke Jaffe (PI), Carolina Maurity Frossard, Wouter van Gent, Thomas Poell, Bruno Cardoso (Federal University of Rio de Janeiro), Melchior Deekman (PhD candidate) and Julia Sampaio (PhD candidate)

This research project, funded by an NWO Open Competition L grant, investigates how digital technologies shape retail drug markets, with a focus on the unequal distribution of risk in Amsterdam and Rio de Janeiro. 

I am currently a co-supervisor to the PhD candidates below:

• João Vicente Fernandez Pereira, with Rivke Jaffe (main supervisor). Project: 'Animating deadly inequalities? A more-than-human approach to urban security governance and its unequal distributions in Rio de Janeiro' (2023-present)
• Ouejdane Sabbah, with Virginie Mamadouh (main supervisor). Project: 'Navigating digital seas: Unveiling the geopolitics of global connectivity in Africa' (2024-present)
• Julia Sampaio, with Wouter van Gent, Bruno Cardoso, and Rivke Jaffe (main supervisor). Project: 'Digital drugs markets in Rio de Janeiro: Tracking users and sellers in fragmented urban contexts​' (2025-present) 

Courses

• Geographies of Uneven Digitalisation - Bachelor's in Human Geography & Planning, Minor International Development Studies, Pre-Master Human Geography & International Development
• Thesis Seminar - Research Master Urban Studies 
• Urban Lab & Thesis Supervision - Research Master Urban Studies 
• Advanced Digital Economic Geography - Master's in Human Geography (Digital Economic Geography Track)
• Geo Focus: Fieldwork Excursion - Master's in Human Geography 
• Thesis Supervision - Master's in Human Geography 
• Thesis Supervision - Master's International Development Studies

Service

• Staff representative at the Programme Committee of the Research Master Urban Studies