English
Marco Allegra, PhD
Address
Instituto de Ciências Sociais - Universidade de Lisboa (ICS-ULisboa) Av. Professor Aníbal de Bettencourt 9, 1600-189 Lisbon (Portugal)
Academia.edu
lisboa.academia.edu/MarcoAllegra
Project website
Current Position
Principal Investigator, Instituto de Ciências Sociais - Universidade de Lisboa (ICS-ULisboa).
Associate Researcher, Centro de Investigação e Estudos de Sociologia – Instituto Universitàrio de Lisboa (CIES-IUL).
Education
Dottorato di ricerca (PhD), Political Science – Department of Political Studies, University of Turin
MA, Near and Middle Eastern Studies – School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London
Laurea (BA+MA), International Relations – Faculty of Political Science, University of Turin
Maturità Scientifica, Liceo Scientifico A. Antonelli, Novara
Awards and Grants
AESOP Lecture Series award (2019)
ICS-ULIsboa ERICS award (2018) for excellence in scientific publication
Ashby Prize (2016) for the most innovative paper published in the journal Environment and Planning A in the year 2015
IC&DT large grant (2015, €165,000) for the project exPERts, awarded by the Portuguese Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT) (Ref: PTDC/ATP-EUR/4309/2014)
ISCTE-IUL Scientific Award (2014, 2016) for excellence in scientific publication
Bolsa Individual de Pós-Doutoramento (2011-2014, 2014-2017), awarded by the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT)
Alfieri Postdoctoral Fellowship (2009-2011) awarded by the Cassa di Risparmio di Torino (CRT)
Doctoral grant (2004-2007) awarded by the Department of Political Studies, University of Torino
Research interests
My main research interests include Middle East politics and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, planning and urban studies, and the relation between expertise, informality and urban governance. Since May 2016, I am the coordinator of the project exPERts (https://expertsproject.org/), on the role of policy experts in housing policies in the metropolitan area of Lisbon; since October 2018 I have been a member of the research team for the project HOPES (“HOusing PErspectives and Struggles. Futures of housing movements, policies and dynamics in Lisbon and beyond”). My articles have appeared in journals such as Citizenship Studies, Mediterranean Politics, Urban Studies, Environment and Planning A, Dialogues in Human Geography, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Planning Theory and Practice, Transaction of AESOP, Etnográfica. With Alessandro Colombo, I am the editor of the blog series Informality in Practice hosted by the blog ATS (https://ambienteterritoriosociedade-ics.org/serie-informality-in-practice/).
Additional information
At ICS-UL, I am member of the research group Environment, Territory and Society (https://www.ics.ulisboa.pt/en/grupo/environment-territory-and-society) and of the Urban Transition Hub (https://urbantransitionshub.org/). I have accumulated substantial teaching experience both at undergraduate and postgraduate level as teaching assistant and lecturer; I am currently supervising two doctoral students in the PhD programmes of Urban Studies (ISCTE-IUL/FCSH-UNL) and Public Policies (ISCTE-IUL). In 2015 I received the Italian National Scientific Qualification (Abilitazione Scientifica Nazionale, ASN) in Geography. In the last few years I have reviewed papers for various scholarly journals (including Political Geography; Territory, Politics and Governance; Urban Studies; British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies; Citizenship Studies; Environment and Planning D; Sociétés Politiques Comparées; Cities; Environment and Planning D; Geography Research Forum; Etnografia e ricerca qualitativa), and have been reviewer of grants applications for the Israeli Science Foundation.
Current research activities
My recent research activities have developed around two main projects.
1.“‘We are here, they are there’: Israel’s settlement policy in perspective”. This project (May 2011-December 2015), delves into the sociology of Israel's settlement policy in the metropolitan area of Jerusalem, by focusing in particular on how the proliferation of large, suburban, non-ideological settlements has transformed the human landscape the West Bank, and on the increasing interconnectedness between Israeli and Palestinian spaces in the area of Jerusalem. This project builds on my previous work on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (Allegra 2009, Allegra 2010, Allegra and Napolitano 2011) and on the comparative research on contested cities (Allegra and Casaglia 2010, Allegra et al 2012). Two articles from this project have been published in the journal Environment and Planning A (Allegra 2013, Handel et al 2015), and one is forthcoming in the Israeli journal Theory and Criticism (Allegra 2017, in Hebrew). I have edited a collection on Israel’s settlement policy (Allegra et al 2017, Indiana University Press), and I am currently working on a monograph on the history of the settlement of Ma’ale Adumim, to be submitted for publication in the Routledge series Studies on the Arab-Israeli Conflict in late 2017. In 2014 I have been the convenor of two international seminars on these topics. With Ariel Handel (Tel-Aviv University and Ben-Gurion University) and Erez Maggor (New York University) I have organized the seminar "The Settlements in the West Bank (1967-2014): New Perspectives" (Minerva Humanities Center, Tel-Aviv, June 29-30, 2014; settlementsworkshop.wordpress.com). With Haim Yacobi (Ben-Gurion University), Cedric Parizot (Université d'Aix-Marseille), I have organized the seminar "A divided city? Rethinking borders, settlements and inter-communal interactions in metropolitan Jerusalem" (Fondation Les Treilles, November 3-8, 2014; les-treilles.com/?page_id=1954).
2. “exPERts [MA1] - Making sense of planning expertise: housing policy and the role of experts in the Programa Especial de Realojamento (PER)”. On August 2015 I have been awarded by the Portuguese FCT a large grant (€165,000, Ref: PTDC/ATP-EUR/4309/2014) as Principal Investigator of the project exPERts (expertsproject.org/). For 36 months (starting in May 2016) I will lead a team of ten researchers in an investigation the Programa Especial de Realojamento (PER, the largest council housing program implemented in Portugal in the last decades). The project will focus on two fundamental questions: How a specific set of professional knowledge and skills is assembled and mobilized to support the policy process? To what extent the experts’ role extends beyond the narrow boundaries of their professional training, and constitutes instead a strategic use of their professional knowledge and status? This project builds on my recent work on the politics of planning (Allegra & Rokem 2015, Gualini et al 2015, Rokem & Allegra 2016, Allegra 2016a), on the nexus between informality and urban governance (I am currently working on a paper on this topic with Hendrik Wagenaar and Alessandro Colombo), as well as on broader epistemic and methodological issues (Allegra et al 2013, Allegra 2014). In the last few years I have been the convener of several initiatives linked to this research perspective, including the Doctoral Workshop "Território (in)Justo. Princípios, Instrumentos e Exequibilidade" (with João Mourato; ICS-UL, Lisbon, January 15-18, 2012; ics.ul.pt/posgraduacao/workshop.php); an advanced training module on housing policies (with Rita Cachado; CIES-IUL, Lisbon, September 8-12, 2014; politicashabitacao.wordpress.com/). I have been among the organizers (with Enrico Gualini and João Mourato) of the first conference of the Planning/Conflict Thematic Group of the Association of European Schools of Planning (AESOP), "Planning/Conflict - Cities and citizenship in times of crisis" (ICS-UL, October 9-11, 2013; planningconflict.ics.ul.pt). HOusing PErspectives and Struggles. Futures of housing movements, policies and dynamics in Lisbon and beyond.
