The IUR will welcome two visiting scholars in the autumn

Claudia Fonseca Alfaro IUR Visiting Scholar

We are thrilled to announce that Professor Robert Saunders and Dr. Marilu Melo Zurita will be the Institute’s first visiting scholars. They will join the IUR collective during the autumn term. While at Malmö, Professor Saunders will explore aspects of Nordic noir while Dr. Melo Zurita will develop a project on underground urbanism.

Robert Saunders

Professor Robert A. Saunders is a researcher in the Department of History, Politics, and Geography at the State University of New York (SUNY). His scholarship focuses explores various intersections of popular culture, spatial politics, and national identity. Professor Saunders’ scholarship has appeared in Social & Cultural Geography, Progress in Human Geography, Political Geography, Politics, Geopolitics, Millennium, Nations and Nationalism, Slavic Review, and Europe-Asia Studies, among other journals. He is the author of five books, including Popular Geopolitics and Nation Branding in the Post-Soviet Realm (Routledge, 2017) and Popular Geopolitics: Plotting an Evolving Discipline (Routledge, 2018).

Marilu Melo Zurita

Dr. Marilu Melo Zurita is is a lecturer in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the University of New South Wales in Australia. Drawing on her background in urban geography and cultural anthropology, her research interest spans disaster risk reduction, social/public housing policy and subterranean geographies. She has been active in a range of research projects across Europe, Africa, Asia and Latin America and Australia, with her work being featured in leading geography, disaster and environmental studies journals. She also sits on the Environmental Hazards editorial board as well as being the Urban Integration Lead within the International Tunnelling Association Committee on Underground Space (ITACUS).

Would you also like to visit the IUR? Check out our Visiting Scholars section for information.