Giulia has been a Lecturer in the Department of Geography since September 2023. Having trained as architect and social scientist, she has a long-standing interest in how global inequalities materialise in cities and extended urban territories, from global cities to sea and agro-industrial borderlands. Prior to joining King's, Giulia was a stipendiary Junior Research Fellow at the Department of Geography and Teaching Associate at the Centre of Latin American Studies, both at the University of Cambridge, where she obtained my PhD in 2021. Before that, Giulia worked as consultant for Amnesty International, at the New York City Department of City Planning, and for an NGO in Benin, among others.

Giulia's interdisciplinary research is positioned at the intersection of cultural geography, urban studies, and sociology. It draws on a diverse range of qualitative, visual, and interpretative methods, as well as postcolonial and critical social theories. It has been funded by grants from the British Academy, the Arts and Humanities Research Council (UKRI), the University of Cambridge, the Society for Latin American Studies, and the Kettle Yard's Arts Fund, and it has appeared on Social and Cultural Geography, Dialogues in Human Geography, Identities, the South Atlantic Quarterly, and the Journal of Latin American Studies, as well as news outlets for wider public reach.

Research

• Global human movement
• Migrant (un)settlements
• Displacement
• Racial capitalism
• Unequal cities
• Carcerality and surveillance
• Urban governance
• Spatial agency and creativity

Giulia's current work centres around three interconnected research strands:

1. Inhabiting unsettlement in the Black Mediterranean: Giulia is PI on a project funded by the British Academy (2023-25) that explores the connection between global displacements, migrant settlements, and racialised spaces of agro-industrial labour and dwelling in Europe's Southern periphery (with an empirical focus on Sicily).
2. Between racial capitalism and multiculturalism in Latin American cities: Giulia has conducted ethnographic research for almost a decade in Bogotá, exploring how racial-colonial inequalities materialise, and are resisted, in urban spaces, planning structures, and urban governance—within and beyond socio-economic segregation.
3. Finally, Giulia is interested in how the Right to the City can be upheld in the face of digital tech infrastructures such as (racialised) urban surveillance. Find out more

Teaching

Undergraduate

• 4SSG1014 Geographical Foundations
• 4SSG1016 Geography in Action
• 4SSG1008 Fieldtrip
• 5SSG2063 BA Geography Research Tutorials
• 6SSG3072 Right to the City

Undergraduate/Postgraduate

• 6SSG3076/7SSGN212 Critical Geopolitics

PhD Supervision

Giulia welcomes PhD applications on any topic related to the research interests listed above. When applying, please send your CV, project proposal, and a brief statement detailing the project fit.

Further details

See Giulia's research profile