Cristina Botana

cristina.botana@udc.es

Lecturer and researcher at the University of A Coruña (UDC) and a collaborating lecturer at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC). She holds a PhD in Architecture and Urbanism from the UDC and a Master’s degree in City and Urbanism from the UOC. She was a Juan de la Cierva postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Geography at the University of Santiago de Compostela (USC) (2022-2025). Her work draws on architecture and urbanism to explore territory as a living archive of memories, tensions and forms of resistance. She focuses on inequalities and on insurgent ways of inhabiting that emerge at the margins, paying close attention to the subtle forms of knowledge that cities conceal between the lines. She conceives territory as a space of relationships, conflict and possibility, where everyday practices and care open up alternative ways of imagining the commons. Her recent projects include an Urban Diagnosis with a gender perspective for the municipality of Silleda—pioneering in Galicia—and the research and public engagement project A Coruña entre memorias: historia, colonialismo e identidade, which included the exhibition A Coruña, porto negreiro at the National Museum of Science and Technology (MUNCYT). She is Director of the Galician Decolonial School and publishes and disseminates work on decolonial urbanism, ecofeminisms and socio-spatial segregation. She has delivered lectures at national institutions (UGR, UB, USC, UDC) and international universities and organisations (UNT–Argentina, UTV–Colombia, MINVU–Chile). She received the 2019 COAG Award for Dissemination, Research and Design for the exhibition Éxodo and regularly contributes to media outlets such as Crítica Urbana, O Salto and Clara Corbelhe.