Dr Maria Raquel Passos Lima
Funding period: 1 November 2026 – 31 August 2027
Type of funding:
Knowledge Mobilisation Awards
DOI: https://doi.org/10.69752/J8NW-8H12
Award Number: USF-KMA-261001
This grant was awarded as a continuation of Residual urbanism: rethinking city-making through waste (Dr Maria Raquel Passos Lima).
Partner organisations: Centre for Urban Studies, University of Amsterdam (The Netherlands), ResiduaLab, Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (UERJ) (Brazil)
Lead organiser: Dr Maria Raquel Passos Lima, Assistant Professor, ResiduaLab/UERJ
Team member: Dr Ana Clara Chequetti, Researcher and Video Editor, Brazilian Center for Analysis and Planning (CEBRAP) and ResiduaLab/UERJ
Contact: Dr Maria Raquel Passos Lima
Abstract:
Residual Rio: Visual histories of urban lives with waste is a knowledge mobilisation project rooted in over a decade of ethnographic fieldwork on waste, toxic ecologies, and urban inequality across the waterscapes of Metropolitan Rio de Janeiro. Led by Urban Studies Foundation (USF) International Fellow Dr Maria Raquel Passos Lima (ResiduaLab, Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro), the project translates research conducted in different territories around Guanabara Bay into a five-episode web documentary series in Portuguese with English subtitles, complemented by bilingual blog posts published across the platforms of ResiduaLab, the Centre for Urban Studies at the University of Amsterdam, and the USF. Each episode explores a distinct dimension of the research: the fate of the city’s waste since the first dumpsite, the leaky ecologies of Guanabara Bay, the efforts of fishers to collect plastics from its waters, the lives and politics of waste-picker cooperatives, and the voices of artisanal fishers organising for climate justice. Rather than denouncing the situations it portrays, the series asks how wastes have been shaping urban landscapes, and what the people living within them reveal about the political and material constitution of urban life in the Global South. Conceived as a contribution to visual anthropology as much as to science communication, the series is designed to function simultaneously for broad publics, schools, community organisations, and researchers working on urban environments, waste governance, and socio-environmental justice.