The RSA Travel Grant award enabled my participation at the 2019 Meeting of the “Encontro Nacional da Associação Nacional de Pós-Graduação e Pesquisa em Planejamento Urbano e Regional” (ENANPUR) that took place in the city of Natal.
The meeting of the ENANPUR is firmly established as one of the major Latin American conferences for those doing research in the field of urban and regional studies. It also offers a valuable experience for early career researchers to present their work to a qualified audience and to develop networks with others in the field.
My motivation to attend the 2019 ENANPUR was two-fold. First, I was interested to co-organise a session aimed at examining current debates of circulating urban knowledge in Latin America. Second, I wanted to present some of the theoretical and empirical findings of my ongoing research on the contemporary urban politics, megaprojects and urban policy circulation in and from Buenos Aires.
Our session ‘Circulación de Conocimientos y políticas urbanas en América Latina” (Knowledge and urban policies circulation in Latin America´) generated great interest. Five papers were selected and one well-established scholar was invited to discuss them.
The positive feedback from participants and attendants suggested the currency of the theme need to be addressed further in the literature. A range of ideas were exchanged by participants spilling into group lunch and post-event drinks.
I am very grateful for the RSA Travel Award for funding my attendance to the event and for the opportunity to discuss my research and link up with Latin American colleagues. I helped to raise awareness of the activities of the RSA by including institutional slides at the beginning of my presentation and highlighting their support to early career researchers. Participants were also encouraged to browse the promotional material available in the room and were informed of the recent opening of the Latin American branch.