Biography
Josefa Stiegler is a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute for Urban and Regional Research (ISR) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. Josefa holds a PhD in political science from the University of Vienna (2023) and has an interdisciplinary background with master degrees Urban Studies (Malmö University) and Gender Studies (University of Vienna). Her dissertation “Em Nome do Estado: A Feminist, Decolonial Analysis of Everyday (In)Securities in Rio de Janeiro’s Favelas” explored how (in)securities in Rio’s favelas are marked by spatiality and shaped by racial and gendered (post)colonial hierarchies, empirically centering on the political activism of mothers of victims of police violence. Josefa’s research interests are centered around the intersecting fields of critical urbanism feminist security studies and decolonial theory; she is curious about questions of how security and space relate to each other to produce gendered, classed and racialized inequalities and insecurities, particularly at the urban margins. Josefa has previously worked as a doctoral researcher at the Department of Political Science at the University of Vienna (2017-2021). In 2022 she received a doctoral completion scholarship from Literar-Mechana, after obtaining her PhD, she was a visiting fellow at Umeå University and since April 2024, she is part of the working group Migration and Urban Diversity at ISR.
Research Interests
- Urban violence and (in)securities
- Protest and collective resistance
- Insurgent planning
- Feminist, decolonial methodologies