Remembering Displacement: Practices of Memorialization and the Production of Space in Rio de Janeiro and Sarajevo
Funding period: 1 July 2023 – 31 March 2024
Type of funding:
International Fellowship
Renata Summa is a post-doctoral researcher at the International Relations Institute, Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, where she teaches modules on Mobilities at the post-graduate program in International Relations. She is also a fellow at the Nantes Institute for Advanced Study (2022-2023). She has received her PhD in International Relations from PUC-Rio de Janeiro, and her Master in International Relations from Sciences-Po Paris. She did her B.A in Journalism at the University of São Paulo, Brazil. She was a visiting researcher at Open University (UK) and at the Centre for Southeast European Studies at University of Graz (Austria). From 2014 to 2015, she lived in Sarajevo, where she conducted fieldwork for her thesis, that was published as a book by Palgrave in 2021, under the title «Everyday Boundaries, Borders and Post- Conflict Societies». Her PhD thesis received the 2017 Best Thesis Award from the Brazilian International Relations Association. She is co-founder of the research group LEEM (Eastern Europe in movement) and the Brazilian International Political Sociology Network. She speaks Portuguese, English, French and Italian fluently and has working knowledge of Spanish and Bosnia/Serbian/Croatian/Montenegrin.
As a USF International Fellow, Dr Summa will spend nine months working with Dr. Matt Davies at the School of Geography, Politics, and Sociology at Newcastle University. Her research will investigate the forcible displacement of people, which takes place in both International (e.g., invasion and war), national (e.g., regeneration policy) contexts and the context of the built environment. The research aims to contribute to Urban Studies and International Political Sociology by exploring the politics affecting how forcibly displaced people build and preserve their identities and communities. It investigates two cities – Sarajevo, in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Rio de Janeiro, in Brazil – to analyse practices of memorialization and the production of space concerning forcible displacement. These cases represent contrasting causes and consequences of the contexts of displacement and the relations between belonging, place, and the built environment.