Our People
Dr Idalina Baptista
Fellow, Official Fellow
Associate Professor in Urban Anthropology
Department for Continuing Education
BEng Lisbon MLA PhD Berkeley
idalina.baptista@conted.ox.ac.uk
Idalina Baptista is associated with the part-time DPhil and MSc in Sustainable Urban Development at the Department for Continuing Education, University of Oxford. She has taught in the past on diverse themes relating to urban planning and environmental management at the University of California, Berkeley, the New University of Lisbon, Universidade Aberta, and Universidade Atlântica, in Portugal. Idalina also held a visiting position at the Institute of Social Sciences, University of Lisbon and collaborated with colleagues at the New University of Lisbon on projects and initiatives involving public participation in urban and environmental planning and policymaking. Her teaching and research is informed by her past experience as an environmental planning consultant and as a volunteer to NGOs in the environmental sector.
Idalina holds a PhD in City and Regional Planning (2009) and a Master of Landscape Architecture (Environmental Planning concentration) (1999) from the University of California, Berkeley, USA, and a 5-year BEng in Environmental Engineering (1996) from the New University of Lisbon, Portugal.
Idalina’s current research interests focus on the colonial and post-colonial geographies of urban energy infrastructure and urbanisation in African cities, using Maputo, Mozambique as a case study. Her work adopts a multi-perspective approach, drawing intellectual and methodological insights from a diversity of disciplinary fields, including urban studies, geography, anthropology, and science, technology and society studies. Through her research, Idalina seeks to deepen our understanding of African urbanization, the governance of urban infrastructures in Africa, and what urban livelihoods emerge as a result.