Mariana Fernandes Mendes

Mariana Fernandes Mendes completed a PhD in Geography at the Universidade Estadual de Campinas in São Paulo, Brazil. During her doctoral training, she was also a visiting scholar at the Université du Québec à Montréal, where she joined the research group "Socio-spatial Implications of the City-Event: The Case of Rio de Janeiro", directed by Professor Anne-Marie Broudehoux.

Her dissertation focus on the impacts of the 2014 Soccer World Cup in Brazil, particularly in Fortaleza metropolis, where hundreds of thousands of people were forcibly expropriated from their houses and communities to allow the construction of highways and infra-structure for the mega sportive event around the arenas. Against the widespread idea that mega sporting events do leave a great "legacy" for locals, Mariana's work has greatly proven that the cost-benefit ratio of the interventions carried out in the mobility sector was a penalty to most of the vulnerable communitis involved in the process.

Using a mixed-method approach and refined datasets Mariana had confirmed the hypothesis that these interventions served as an ideology and discourse to carry out the "social cleansing" of empoverished communities, and to promote the development of urban land in such areas targeted by the real estate market. However, in her thesis, she also highlights that some interventions at the municipality level have promoted sustainable mobility with the deployment of cycling infrastructure and shared bicycle systems. And it is these initiatives that are the subject of her post-doctoral research at LaSUR.

Since 2010, she has dedicated herself to research, teaching, publishing, cycling activism and participation in community and international academic events on the theme of sustainable urban mobility in Brazil, and around the world. This has allow her to deepen the political, academic and institutional debate on sustainable planning integrated to accessibility, shared spaces for more democratic cities.