Dr Alessandra Radicati is an anthropologist and urban geographer concerned with material and symbolic dimensions of life in contemporary cities. She is LSE Fellow in the Department of International Development where she teaches on the MSc in International Development and Humanitarian Emergencies. Based on 13 months of field research, Alessandra's PhD was an ethnographic exploration of urban development in Colombo, Sri Lanka. This multi-sited study investigated how everyday experiences of dispossession for the urban poor were simultaneously constitutive of and concealed by official "global city" aspirations. Alessandra is preparing a book manuscript based on this research, which examines the links between dispossession, aspiration and mobility. Ultimately, this work makes interventions into critical discussions about the generation of urban theory, as well as offering a contemporary and ethnographically-rooted perspective on the rise of Indian Ocean studies.
Dr Alessandra Radicati is also a begininer in Sinhala.