Manchester Architecture Research Group [MARG] Research Seminar
About this Event
Infrastructure Constellations for Urban Resilience
Dr. Jorge A. Ortiz-Moreno
The accelerating climate crisis is disrupting networked urban infrastructures, more severely and more frequently, heightening risks for vulnerable populations, particularly in the Global South. In response, various institutions have opted to deploy decentralised systems – often referred to as infrastructure constellations – to alleviate chronic vulnerabilities and promote climate adaptation and resilience.
To understand this infrastructural shift, the lecture will provide an overview of two Latin American cases from an integrated urban political-ecological and sustainability-transitions perspective: on the one hand, the deployment of rainwater harvesting facilities to resist droughts in Mexico, and on the other hand, the increasing adoption of solar power systems since the devastating impact of the hurricanes Irma and
Overall, the project investigates the social, material, political, and technological implications for the everyday lives of marginalised populations adopting decentralised infrastructure, as well as the potential of emerging governance models to enable just and resilient transitions.
Dr. is an urban development researcher and practitioner with extensive experience in urban strategic planning, sustainability, and resilience. His interdisciplinary background connects Environmental Science (National University of Mexico) with Urban Development Planning (University College London) and Development Studies (University of Sussex). Jorge's research focuses on the role of decentralised infrastructures in enabling just and sustainable urban futures. In addition to his academic work, he has advised a diverse range of clients through consultancy projects and has served as a public official for local governments in Mexico.
This research is currently being conducted by Jorge as part of his Bicentenary Fellowship at the University of Manchester.
Festivalising the Postcolony: Architecture, Leisure, and Political Economy in West African Urban Carnivals
Dr. Michael Gameli Dziwornu
This project asks how large-scale festive events in West African cities specifically the “Detty December” concerts and street festivals in Accra and Lagos, and the Kwahu Easter carnival in Ghana transform urban and peri-urban spaces into “architectures of enjoyment” while entangling with capital investment and social inequality. Key questions include: (1) In what ways do these carnivalesque events reconfigure public space into sites of collective pleasure and spectacle? (2) How do festival spaces enable performative collectivity and the rhetoric of shared joy, even as access and participation remain stratified by class and other inequalities? (3) What political-economic dynamics (tourism booms, real estate speculation, entrepreneurship) are ignited by the festival “season,” and how do these shape urban development trajectories in the postcolonial context?
Dr Michael Gameli Dziwornu is a Ghanaian urban geographer and research scientist whose work bridges rigorous scholarship with public-facing practice. He heads the Thematic Mapping Section at Ghana’s Council for Scientific and Industrial Research–Institute for Scientific and Technological Information (CSIR-INSTI). Holding a PhD in Urban Studies from the University of Milan-Bicocca, where his dissertation traced the spatial politics of container urbanism in Accra, his research spans human geography, migration studies, sustainable development, and carceral geography. His scholarship appears in Home Cultures, GeoJournal, Crime Prevention and Community Safety, Future Anterior, and the Journal of Asian and African Studies, and he regularly presents at global forums including the AAG, SAH, and the International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam. Michael’s practice extends beyond academia: he co-curated “Intersections: The Architecture of Victor Adegbite and Charles Polónyi in Ghana” and “Asutsuare Rebound,” advised on climate-smart agriculture mapping for CGIAR, and serves as an external PhD examiner and mentor to emerging scholars. In 2025, he joined the University of Michigan as an African Presidential Scholar, deepening comparative work on post-socialist and post-colonial urban infrastructures. He is also a founding partner of Southeast, an intellectual platform linking Eastern European and West African thinkers, designers, and institutions.
Michael is currently an Urban Studies Foundation International Fellow at the University of Manchester (Department of Architecture), working under the mentorship of Professor Stephen Walker and Professor Thomas Gillespie.
Where is it happening?
Event Location & Nearby Stays:
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