Repetition as Artistic Labour

The role of repetition in professional dance practice, often dismissed as merely technical or secondary, in fact constitutes a central pillar in the creation and transmission of choreographic works. Situated at the intersection of execution and memory, repetition functions not as a passive mimicry but as an active mode of mediation, one that shapes the aesthetic, performative and temporal continuity of dance pieces. The figure responsible for this labour—the rehearsal director or repetidor/a—has traditionally occupied a marginal position within both academic discourse and the artistic field, despite bearing responsibility for the embodied maintenance of choreographic intent and the adaptation of movement vocabularies across different performers and settings. By highlighting the invisible structures that sustain artistic production, this role challenges dominant narratives of authorship that centre creative originality in a single choreographer. Instead, it draws attention to the collective, iterative, and situated dimensions of dance-making. Analysed through a sociological lens that foregrounds the dynamics between theory and practice—particularly the perceived divide between craft and art—the rehearsal director emerges as a critical but overlooked actor in the artistic ecology. Their work embodies a kind of applied knowledge, rooted in lived experience, relational sensitivity, and historical awareness of the piece being transmitted. This reframing invites a broader reconsideration of how labour is distributed, recognised, and valued in the performing arts. It also raises deeper epistemological questions about what constitutes artistic contribution when creation is sustained not only through innovation, but through repetition, care, and interpretive fidelity. Such insights call for a more inclusive understanding of dance as a collaborative and recursive practice, where repetition is not the negation of creativity but one of its most fundamental expressions.

Performance, Stereotypes and Gender Subversion

The genealogy of Mexican performance art must be read through its intimate relation to politics, colonial memory and cultural resistance. As Galindo Carbonell demonstrates, the performance scene in Mexico cannot be reduced to mere aesthetic experimentation but is instead a strategic arena of activism in which the body becomes both weapon and testimony (Galindo Carbonell, 2021). The historical layers that structure Mexican collective identity—Spanish colonisation and the Mexican Revolution—generate entrenched gendered stereotypes: the pelado, the pachuco, the soldadera, the Virgen of Guadalupe. These figures, often promoted by nationalist discourse, continue to shape social imaginaries. Performance artists appropriate, distort and subvert these models, exposing their violent underpinnings. Figures like Lorena Wolffer and Teresa Margolles confront the aesthetics of death and femicide, while Jesusa Rodríguez and Erika Trejo reframe the myth of La Malinche to contest patriarchal historiography. This reworking of inherited archetypes demonstrates that stereotypes are not neutral cultural residues but mechanisms of domination that demand artistic insurgency (Galindo Carbonell, 2021). The thesis situates Mexican performance within transnational genealogies—from European dada and American happenings to feminist and queer interventions—yet insists on its specificity. Mexican performance develops from disenchantment with political institutions and from the urgency of decolonial critique. The body is understood not only as medium but as a site of inscription of race, class and gender; a locus of resistance where normative scripts can be disrupted. Galindo Carbonell’s conceptual framework draws on Cultural Studies, Gender Studies and Decolonial Theory, articulating performance as a transdisciplinary act. Activist collectives such as Polvo de Gallina Negra foreground feminist critique, while postporn performers like Rocío Boliver or Felipe Osornio radicalise corporeal exposure to dismantle heteronormativity. Likewise, the muxe performer Lukas Avendaño embodies indigenous counter-genders, destabilising binary logics imported by colonial modernity. What emerges is an expanded notion of performance as counter-discourse, an embodied practice that challenges both state hegemony and patriarchal violence. The critical force of Mexican performance lies not only in its aesthetic radicalism but in its ability to reimagine social contracts, exposing violence while rehearsing alternative identities. This research thus affirms that contemporary Mexican performance is inseparable from activism: its power resides in making visible, denouncing and resignifying the very stereotypes that constrain life.

Galindo Carbonell, M. D. (2021) Estereotipos, activismo y subversión de género en el performance mexicano. Universidad de Murcia.

Choreographic Landscapes and the Politics of Co-Presence

 

The notion of the choreographic landscape reconfigures the traditional subordination of choreography to dance, proposing it instead as an autonomous field of thought and practice. García Sottile argues that choreography today functions less as a codified technique and more as a cartographic system: a mode of mapping relations between bodies, environments, and materialities within shared space (García Sottile, 2016). In this sense, the choreographic intersects with ecological thinking, since both stress mutability, dynamic balance and the non-hierarchical organisation of elements. The concept of disseminated choreography emerges as a key tool in this framework. Here, gesture operates as principle rather than ornament, and installations become laboratories of co-presence. Unlike the theatrical stage, the choreographic installation invites the visitor to activate latent gestures, to complete the work through movement and attention. This shift reveals choreography not simply as composition for dancers but as a relational dispositif for articulating co-habitation among human and non-human bodies. The metaphor of the garden is particularly generative. Like installations, gardens are bounded yet porous spaces, perpetually transformed by movement, growth and decay. They demand entry, positioning, and a heightened perceptual engagement with both environment and others. The choreographic landscape, read as garden, becomes a heterotopic site where art, ecology and politics converge. This is not metaphorical embellishment but an ontological claim: space itself is enacted through relational gestures (García Sottile, 2016). Methodologically, García Sottile adopts a rhizomatic approach (after Deleuze and Guattari), privileging multiplicity, loops and non-linear connections. Such a model allows choreographic installations to be understood not as a stable genre but as a constellation of emergent practices linking performance, visual art and architecture. Examples ranging from Forsythe’s participatory environments to Tomás Saraceno’s spatial ecologies highlight how installations choreograph attention, proprioception and collective presence. Critically, this perspective repositions the spectator: no longer a passive recipient but a co-agent who shares responsibility in the articulation of space. The choreographic installation thus becomes a political experiment, staging an ecology of the body in movement that resists commodification and rehearses modes of coexistence. The strength of García Sottile’s proposal lies in showing how artistic practice can cultivate sensitivity to interdependence at a time of ecological and social precarity.

García Sottile, M. E. (2016) Paisajes coreográficos. Para una ecología de la co-presencia. Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona / Università di Bologna.

Dance, Visual Arts and the Politics

The intersections between dance and the visual arts in Spain cannot be understood in isolation from the wider geopolitics of the Cold War and the internal convulsions of late Francoism and the democratic transition. González Castro demonstrates that the hegemonic cultural models of the United States in the 1960s –embodied in the experiments of Rauschenberg, Johns, Cunningham and Cage– not only reframed the very ontology of the artwork but also travelled to Spain, where they were assimilated under very specific conditions of censorship, repression and belated modernisation (González Castro, 2023). In the Spanish context, the 1970s marked an artistic eruption: the waning of censorship enabled new aesthetic dissidences, from Anna Maleras’ Grup Estudi in Barcelona to the performance-inflected practices of Catalan conceptualists. The dance field, underdeveloped by comparison to the visual arts, absorbed postmodern impulses with urgency, creating an accelerated hybridisation. The body emerged not as the disciplined unit of ballet but as fragmented, abject, precarious –an index of political and existential fracture. Such aesthetics of disappearance found resonance across visual and choreographic practices, linking Esther Ferrer, Jordi Benito and Cesc Gelabert with international figures like Yvonne Rainer or Carolee Schneemann (González Castro, 2023). The 1980s introduced a paradox: institutionalisation and professionalisation accompanied the arrival of democracy. Festivals, theatres and state programmes promoted dance as part of a cultural policy aimed at constructing a modern image of Spain. Yet, this support coexisted with neoliberal amnesia and a weakening of explicitly political voices. Choreographic collectives such as Heura, Danat Dansa or La Fura dels Baus expanded interdisciplinary vocabularies, drawing on visual dramaturgy and performance, while figures like Àngels Margarit or María La Ribot pursued singular trajectories that redefined authorship through the solo format. The coexistence of collectivity and individualisation mirrored wider cultural ambiguities (González Castro, 2023). From a critical perspective, this genealogy underlines the Spanish case as one of discontinuity and acceleration: the belated reception of modern dance, the compressed importation of postmodern paradigms, and the strategic use of culture in the democratic transition. At the same time, feminist and countercultural practices destabilised inherited stereotypes, insisting on agency, sexuality and corporeal multiplicity. By situating Spanish dance within global circuits while emphasising its specific sociopolitical conditions, González Castro reframes it not as peripheral imitation but as a singular negotiation between international models and local urgencies. In this light, the study makes clear that the appreciation of Spanish contemporary dance requires reading it as a palimpsest of transfers, resistances and reconfigurations, where visual arts and choreography converge to articulate a body that is simultaneously aesthetic, political and historical.

González Castro, A. M. (2023) Artes visuales y danza en la España contemporánea: transferencias, vínculos y singularidades. Universidad de Sevilla.

The Aesthetic Experience of Dance

The appreciation of dance cannot be reduced to a matter of personal taste or aesthetic pleasure; rather, it emerges as a complex, situated experience that intertwines perceptual immediacy with reflective interpretation. Reductive approaches in experimental psychology, which isolate clips of movement and equate liking with artistic value, risk obscuring what makes dance an art form. By stripping works from their contexts, they confuse the aesthetic with the artistic, thereby sacrificing both interpretative richness and ecological validity (Fernández Cotarelo, 2022). A more nuanced account distinguishes between three levels: movement, action and artistic interpretation. Dance is not merely motion but becomes meaningful when framed by intentionality and contextual understanding. This definition allows us to include both canonical and non-traditional practices—from ballet to postmodern fragments or choreographic readymades—within the same analytical horizon (Fernández Cotarelo, 2022). Equally, the experience of the spectator is structured in two intertwined layers. The reactive comprises sensory-motor resonance, arousal and affective pleasure. The reflexive layer, however, demands intellectual labour: the search for sense, the adoption of an interrogative stance, the mobilisation of conceptual knowledge and the categorisation of what is seen. Together, these processes generate an encounter that is both embodied and interpretative (Fernández Cotarelo, 2022). Empirical studies support this duality. Dimensions such as engagement, arousal and unity describe how audiences respond to contemporary performances, while “fluency” in dance knowledge does not automatically predict higher appreciation. Instead, perceived comprehensibility appears as a decisive factor, demonstrating that mediation and contextual framing are not secondary but constitutive of the aesthetic act (Fernández Cotarelo, 2022). In critical terms, the implication is clear: to curate or teach dance is not simply to present or transmit, but to construct conditions where meaning can emerge. Engagement depends less on the accumulation of facts and more on enabling spectators to enter the reflexive dimension without foreclosing indeterminacy. Dance appreciation thus becomes an active negotiation between sensation, knowledge and interpretation.

Urbanas

Urbanas

  

Urbanas

Urbanas

Urbanas

 

 

Challenging the Hegemony of Happiness

The prominence of subjective well-being (SWB) in UK policy debates reflects a significant shift in how governments evaluate societal progress, yet this dominance may oversimplify complex realities. Grounded in utilitarian assumptions, the SWB approach posits that self-reported happiness or life satisfaction is a sufficient proxy for human flourishing, which aligns with classical economic metrics such as GDP. However, as Austin (2015) critically argues, this narrow lens marginalises pluralistic understandings of well-being and neglects structural inequalities. The UK’s Measuring National Well-being Programme, while initially aiming for a multidimensional framework, ultimately centres SWB as its focal metric, echoing Benthamite ideals where policy success is judged by aggregated psychological states. For instance, domains like health or employment are often interpreted merely as inputs to subjective satisfaction rather than valued ends in themselves. This instrumentalism raises both ethical and epistemological concerns, particularly given the risks of adaptive preferences, where individuals in deprived conditions may report high satisfaction despite severe objective disadvantage. The Capabilities Approach, inspired by Aristotelian ethics and advanced by Sen and Nussbaum, offers a more nuanced and egalitarian alternative. It prioritises the real freedoms individuals have to pursue meaningful lives, thereby providing a robust, multidimensional foundation for policy evaluation. As such, a genuine move beyond GDP must involve challenging the current hegemony of happiness and embracing frameworks that reflect the full spectrum of human well-being (Austin, 2015).

Thursday

 

 

Man O’ War

Though often mistaken for a jellyfish or even a fish, the Portuguese man o’ war (Physalia physalis) is in fact a siphonophore, a colonial organism composed of specialised polyps that operate collectively as a single entity. Its name in English evokes not biology but naval history, drawing a metaphor from the man-of-war, the warship that once dominated the oceans during the height of Portuguese maritime expansion; the creature’s gas-filled float, reminiscent of a billowing sail, parallels the elegant yet ominous silhouette of those seafaring vessels. In Latin, its name reflects morphology rather than metaphor, derived from the Greek physa meaning “bladder” or “bubble”, referencing the translucent, balloon-like structure that keeps it buoyant on the ocean’s surface. Culturally and ecologically, this organism occupies a liminal space: it drifts passively across warm seas, driven solely by wind and current, trailing tentacles that can extend beyond ten metres, armed with venomous nematocysts capable of paralysing small fish and inflicting excruciating pain on humans. Visually mesmerising with hues of blue, violet, and transparent iridescence, it embodies the duality of beauty and danger, seducing the eye even as it conceals biochemical weaponry. Historically, its very name inscribes it within a symbolic continuum of power, exploration, and fear, echoing the ambiguous legacy of imperial conquest that shaped both the biological sciences and global nomenclature. In sum, the Portuguese man o’ war is a floating contradiction: a drifting colony mistaken for an individual, an aesthetic marvel that stings, and a living fossil of linguistic and colonial history.

Dune

 

Dune

 

Dune

 

Dune

 

Dune

 

Thursday

 

Transit, Walkability, and the Geometry of Access

Jarrett Walker presents public transport not merely as a logistical or technological system, but as a fundamental instrument of human agency, one that shapes how freely individuals can access life’s opportunities; this perspective reframes transit as a matter of social equity, sustainability, and democratic participation, arguing that the structure of a city’s transport system directly affects its residents’ capacity to live fully and independently; Walker’s central principle—“frequency is freedom”—posits that reliable, high-frequency services dramatically expand the reachable urban terrain for those without cars, but this accessibility hinges entirely on walkability, since every transit trip begins and ends on foot; in this context, pedestrian infrastructure becomes foundational rather than supplementary, essential for ensuring that access is genuinely available; Walker critiques misleading binaries such as ridership versus equity, urging planners to understand the geometric trade-offs between coverage and frequency, and to approach urban form with clarity: compact, mixed-use environments best support effective transit networks, while sprawling development undermines them; he cautions against the allure of technological or aesthetic fixes, emphasising instead the importance of clear, rational planning grounded in geometry, connectivity, and public interest; through intuitive diagrams and direct language, he seeks to empower citizens to engage in transit debates, fostering civic agency by demystifying key principles; crucially, Walker links mobility with opportunity, arguing that transit quality shapes life chances and that pedestrian-friendly design is central to achieving mobility justice; rather than treating walking and transit as separate concerns, he demonstrates their deep interdependence, suggesting that a truly inclusive city requires the seamless integration of both; ultimately, Human Transit serves not only as a practical manual for planners but as a manifesto for cities centred on people, insisting that meaningful access—not mere movement—is the goal, and that designing for human-scale mobility is key to building equitable, resilient urban futures.

Walker, J. (2011) Human Transit: How Clearer Thinking about Public Transit Can Enrich Our Communities and Our Lives. Washington, DC: Island Press.

Dwelling as Relational Practice

Through a phenomenological lens, Seamon argues that places are not passive settings but active participants in the human experience, co-constituted through synergistic relationality—a concept describing the evolving, reciprocal interplay between individuals and their surroundings. This interaction forms a "dance" of experience, where memory, bodily rhythms, spatial design, and cultural practices converge to shape how meaning emerges in place. Drawing from lifeworld phenomenology and systems theory, Seamon articulates six foundational processes—such as coherence, attachment, interaction, and symbolism—which influence whether a place becomes deeply inhabited or alienating. He presents case studies from architecture, urban planning, and community psychology, illustrating how thoughtful design fosters dwelling intelligence—a person’s capacity to intuitively engage with and feel at home in a place. Conversely, environments marked by rapid change, fragmentation, or placelessness disrupt this intelligence, leading to disconnection and experiential impoverishment. Seamon’s work reframes the idea of walkability, often treated as a metric of urban efficiency, into a practice of belonging grounded in memory, emotion, and embodied perception. Walking, then, becomes a way of making sense of place, rather than simply navigating space. He advocates for designers to pay attention to subtle environmental qualities—texture, temporal rhythms, seasonal shifts, and pattern continuity—that shape emotional attachment, rather than prioritising purely functional or aesthetic criteria. By challenging the rationalist, context-blind assumptions that dominate modernist planning, Seamon’s Life Takes Place (2018) offers a powerful alternative: a theory of place grounded in embodied meaning, emotional resonance, and the lived realities of everyday life. His work is essential for those aiming to cultivate environments where inhabiting becomes a form of becoming, where the design of spaces encourages rootedness, memory, and relational depth.

Seamon, D. (2018) Life Takes Place: Phenomenology, Lifeworlds, and Place-Making. London: Routledge.

Walking for Transport

Walking, as a moderate and routine form of physical activity embedded in daily life, holds immense potential for reducing sedentarism and improving public health, particularly in urban settings where short motorised trips are common. Empirical data drawn from regional health and mobility surveys reveals that replacing motorised journeys of five minutes or less with walking could significantly reduce mortality rates—with over 100 preventable deaths in men and around 80 in women annually—while generating economic savings exceeding 200 million euros. These estimates highlight walking not merely as a personal habit but as a powerful public health intervention with measurable collective benefits. Further analysis demonstrates that individuals who walk or use public transport exhibit a lower prevalence of overweight and obesity, especially among men, compared to those relying exclusively on cars or motorbikes. Additionally, environmental conditions such as neighbourhood motorisation directly impact walking frequency, even after adjusting for other contextual variables. High motorisation levels correlate negatively with pedestrian activity, affirming that urban design and traffic density can either inhibit or promote healthy behaviours. Walking also presents gender-specific patterns, indicating the necessity for targeted interventions that address inequities in mobility access and safety perceptions. Beyond health, walking acts as a catalyst for reclaiming public space, fostering social cohesion, and encouraging sustainable mobility. By identifying both vulnerable population groups and modifiable environmental elements, walking emerges as a strategic axis for urban and health policies, capable of transforming individual routines into population-wide benefits.

Olabarría, M. (2013) Walking for transportation: estudio de los factores individuales y contextuales que influyen en el caminar como medio de transporte y de sus implicaciones en salud. PhD thesis. Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Spain. 

The Habitable Forest

The concept of a harmonious integration between city and nature has re-emerged as a significant architectural aspiration, particularly in the aftermath of mid-20th-century European reconstruction. While many housing developments of the Modern Movement implemented green space through generic urban formulas—such as repetitive blocks or single-family typologies—certain Finnish projects approached the issue with greater sensitivity to landscape. This study examines three paradigmatic cases: Tapiola, Viitaniemi and Korkalorinne, which exemplify an alternative model known as the habitable forest. In these developments, urban form is not imposed on nature but derived from it. Built volumes, roadways and green zones are conceived as part of the larger ecosystem, with landscape acting as a primary structuring agent. Rather than pursuing the abstract ideals of urban form, these projects prioritise creating place-based experiences through spatial fragmentation, ecological layering, and perceptual immersion. The forest is not simply preserved; it is activated as a residential atmosphere. Urban elements are reinterpreted as landscape components, generating a typology where the natural and the artificial cohabit with continuity. Despite differences in site and scale, the projects share a logic of composition based on the site’s physical and cultural memory. A recurring design strategy involves articulating built forms with the terrain and vegetation, using perceptual rules to enhance the sensory relationship between people and place. This results in a hybrid typology that diverges from both the garden city model and the rationalist housing block. Ultimately, these projects offer a third way: a territorial, ecological and scenographic approach to city-making. They reframe architecture as a medium to construct “other nature”—an active, designed, and inhabitable landscape. The insights drawn from these Finnish experiments resonate with current efforts to align urban living with ecological consciousness and territorial cohesion.

Cuéllar Jaramillo, Á. (2017). El bosque habitable. La experiencia de construir ciudad paisaje en Finlandia. PhD thesis, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya.

Wednesday

   

The Economy of Movement

 

Walking emerges as the most silent, constant, and self-sufficient gesture, a practice that requires nothing but the body and time; it transforms minutes into energy, focus, and presence, enabling long journeys without fatigue or cost, as it demands no tools, no specific location, and no external validation—only one's own rhythm and will; in contrast, dancing stands as an expression of joy and freedom, yet that freedom comes with conditions: music, space, and often the gaze of others, making it less sustainable and more ephemeral—brilliant like a spark but demanding in resources; cycling, in turn, offers an amplification of movement, increasing range and speed, though it relies heavily on external factors—like infrastructure, safety, upkeep, and protection against theft—its apparent efficiency concealing hidden costs that temper its autonomy; finally, swimming proposes an immersion into another element where the body feels renewed and buoyant, yet water requires preparation and environment: pools, garments, towels, schedules, and transportation, turning a fluid act into a choreographed logistics operation, distant from the spontaneous impulse of walking; thus, among all modes examined, only walking maintains the nature of an essential, minimal, and universal action, capable of merging body and surroundings without intermediaries, revealing a radical economy of movement that links the everyday with the philosophical, the physical with the mental, depending on nothing more than oneself. 

Place and Emotional Atmosphere

Drawing on phenomenology, the work explores how architecture and the built environment interact with human emotion, memory, and cultural identity. The author argues that buildings cannot be divorced from their geographic, historical, and symbolic contexts. Instead, meaningful architecture emerges when form, material, and spatial organisation reflect and enhance the distinctive character of a locale. The text places emphasis on architectural typologies—“houses,” “sacred spaces,” “town squares”—as carriers of existential and cultural meaning. Norberg‑Schulz explains that design must consider not only functional needs but also the human need for orientation, rootedness, and symbolic anchorage. He introduces the concept of dwelling awareness, where spatial environments support human presence by providing stability, coherence, and emotional resonance. Through poetic yet analytical writing, Norberg‑Schulz explores how landscape, light, topography, and tradition interplay with human perception. He presents examples from Mediterranean villages and Scandinavian architecture, illustrating how certain forms and materials evoke atmosphere and belonging. Walkability, from this perspective, is more than movement—it’s an embodied way of relating to place, as the act of walking through atmospherically tuned environments nurtures connection, contemplation and existential orientation. Importantly, the author warns against placeless modernism—design that ignores local meaning and produces interchangeable, emotionally void spaces. In contrast, genius loci demands design that is site‑specific, context‑aware, and capable of evoking a sense of place and memory. The book thus serves as a philosophical guide for architects and urbanists seeking to create environments that foster human well‑being, rootedness, and cultural continuity.

Norberg‑Schulz, C. (1979) Genius Loci: Towards a Phenomenology of Architecture. New York: Rizzoli.

A Practice of Embodied Research

The act of walking not merely as physical displacement but as an artistic and autoethnographic mode of inquiry capable of generating alternative narratives, unforeseen connections, and embodied knowledge through the continuous interplay between personal experience and artistic practice. From a position that integrates the roles of artist, educator, and researcher, the walking practice becomes a critical and generative tool, fostering intuitive mappings that materialize during the act itself. By embracing the concept of drift—understood here as both methodology and metaphor—the research evolves organically, without adherence to rigid academic or artistic frameworks, enabling a flexible, processual approach where each step opens new possibilities for inquiry and creation. The methodology privileges lived experience, allowing the personal to inform and reshape the artistic, while navigating through marginal, overlooked, or invisible spaces that hold potential for transformative insight. Through this approach, walking is reconceptualized as a mode of artistic production, capable of disrupting conventional epistemologies by prioritizing subjective, affective, and spatial engagement. It is both a means of intervention and a strategy of resistance, granting visibility to the unspoken and the unseen while carving new pathways of understanding. This embodied form of research is grounded in a practice that continuously redefines itself, refusing closure and embracing the provisional, the unstable, and the emergent as vital components of creative exploration. Ultimately, the inquiry reaffirms the potency of the walking body as an epistemological agent capable of activating territories, shifting perspectives, and revealing the poetics of movement as a legitimate and powerful form of knowledge production.

Martínez Morales, M. (2015). Andando. La acción de andar como práctica artística desde una perspectiva artográfica. Universidad de Jaén. 

Well-being Indicators and Policy

The integration of subjective well-being indicators into public policy has triggered both enthusiasm and scepticism within academic and political circles. Advocates argue these measures provide holistic insights into citizens' lived experiences, extending beyond traditional economic metrics such as GDP (Dolan et al., 2006a). Theoretical models—ranging from preference satisfaction and basic needs to hedonic and evaluative approaches—offer diverse lenses to interpret well-being, each revealing different facets of human flourishing. However, this conceptual diversity is also a weakness, complicating the creation of coherent, universally accepted indicators. Moreover, technical challenges such as bounded scales, adaptation effects, and status comparisons undermine the reliability of longitudinal data, particularly when subjective reports are used to assess policy impact. Politically, resistance often arises from classical liberal concerns about state overreach and the perception of a "nanny state," although contemporary governance generally supports welfare-enhancing interventions. In practice, well-being indicators can function as contextual tools, performance metrics, or even leading indicators when designed carefully. Nevertheless, effective application depends on ensuring clarity of purpose, selecting indicators appropriate to demographic and life-course stages, and integrating subjective data with objective benchmarks. Without these, well-being measurement risks becoming conceptually muddled and operationally ineffective (Thompson & Marks, 2008).

Thompson, S. & Marks, N. (2008) Measuring well-being in policy: issues and applications. London: nef.

Urban Cultural Heritage in Transition

Memory, Loss, and the Future of Managua’s Historic Center examines the historical, spatial, and symbolic processes that have shaped the urban heart of Nicaragua’s capital, presenting the historic center of Managua not only as a locus of architectural remnants but as a fragmented yet potent reservoir of collective memory and identity. The research begins by delineating the material and immaterial layers of the city—architecture, urban landscape, and everyday practices—whose coexistence underlines the tension between the physical degradation of heritage and the resilience of communal narratives. Framed within a context of natural disasters, political instability, and urban neglect, the study highlights the paradox of a capital that evolved away from its historic center, generating a void in both spatial continuity and cultural belonging. Through a meticulous heritage valuation and critical examination of current and past management strategies, the investigation aims to recover the center as a meaningful public space, integrating conservation with urban regeneration and social inclusion. Recognizing the symbolic weight of destruction, the thesis explores how these ruptures can inform a new paradigm of resilient and sustainable development, proposing strategic models that reconcile memory with modernization. Ultimately, this work positions Managua’s historic core as a potential catalyst for broader urban transformation, where heritage is not a static relic but a living system adaptable to contemporary challenges and capable of inspiring civic engagement, cultural continuity, and visionary planning for future generations.

Suárez Bonilla, B. (2025). Patrimonio cultural urbano del centro histórico de Managua: memoria, conservación y desarrollo; entre la adversidad y la pérdida. Universidad de Valladolid.

Lexical Identity in Motion

Popular Speech in Managua’s Markets offers a rich and empirical exploration of the Nicaraguan popular lexicon as used in the bustling commercial spaces of Managua’s markets, where language becomes both a tool of trade and a marker of cultural identity. Grounded in extensive fieldwork, the research involved 621 interviews conducted across ten capital markets and three departmental locations, covering thirteen specific sections of commerce—from groceries and footwear to butcher shops and local eateries. The investigation not only identifies and organizes the lexical units used in these environments but also traces their semantic, phonological, and syntactic behaviors, highlighting the expressive nuances of Nicaragua’s everyday speech. By cross-referencing these terms with eleven dictionaries and relevant texts, the study verifies established meanings or, in cases of absence, provides contextual definitions that underscore the creative and adaptive nature of popular language. It further includes a curated list of Americanisms prevalent in Nicaragua, situating this localized lexicon within a broader linguistic framework. The result is a compelling documentation of how the oral tradition and market dynamics coalesce to sustain a vibrant and evolving linguistic ecosystem. These markets, functioning as both economic and social hubs, become vital arenas where language reflects social stratification, regional influences, and linguistic innovation, ultimately offering insights into how identity, commerce, and communication intertwine in the vernacular practices of a nation.

Noguera Guevara, M. (2001). El léxico popular nicaraguense en el sector de los mercados de Managua. Universidad de Oviedo.

Staden

Since 2013, Staden has been a long-running, richly reported podcast that thinks holistically about the city: Dan Hallemar and Håkan Forsell walk, read and listen through streets from Kiruna to Istanbul, Los Angeles to Cairo, mapping how architecture, memory, labour, faith, music, infrastructure and everyday life braid into urban form. Their method is political without slogans—treating buildings, archives, sounds and habits as clues—so episodes move fluently between planning and poetry, welfare histories and market shocks, monuments and margins. The tone is curious, exact and generous: each city becomes a case study in seeing, where contradictions—beauty and violence, nostalgia and reinvention—coexist. Staden is, simply, a patient school of urban attention, turning listeners into better readers of places.

Kiruna, Lissabon, Hjo, Manchester, Berlin, Karlskrona, Stockholm, Borlänge, Uppsala, Västerås, Tel Aviv, Sundsvall, Helsingfors, London, Köpenhamn, Södertälje, Wien, Brno, Halmstad, Belgrad, Paris, Malmö, Alexandria, Amsterdam, Ruhr, Bryssel, Istanbul, Budapest, Borås, Oslo, Warszawa, Baltimore, Savannah, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Diego/Tijuana, Sala, Kalmar, Prag, Rom, Neapel, Thessaloniki, Skellefteå, Linköping, Visby, Moskva, Hudiksvall, Örebro, Örnsköldsvik, Norrköping, Antwerpen, Malung, Bredäng, Göteborg, Luleå, Tuzla, Sarajevo, Split, Växjö, Fruängen, Landskrona, Tunis, Fès, Islamsk stad, Liljeholmen, Huskvarna, Sheffield, Blackpool, Liverpool, Norra England, Östersund, Zürich, Hamburg, Riga, Minsk, Karlstad, Karlshamn, Sigtuna, Motala, Gävle, Eskilstuna, Skaraborg, Falun, Umeå, Sundbyberg, Gdańsk, Lund, Lillehammer, Trondheim, Kairo, Helsingborg, Luxemburg, Trier, Leipzig, Dresden, Málaga, Córdoba.

https://www.stadenpodcast.se/bladdra

Stadsplanering, Böcker, Trauman, Villastaden, Aktivism, Frågepod, Grannskap, Mixtape, Skolan, Shopping, Utopier, Turismen, Döden, Tjuv och polis, Kulturarvets teater, New Towns, Ensamheten, Eliten, Tro och religion, Känslorna, Tiden, Katastrofen, Musiken, Arkiven och biblioteken, Hälsan, Kollektivtrafiken, Råvaran, Hemmets rum, 1980-talet, Folksamlingen, Konstverk, Natten, Information, Marken, Järnvägen, Monumenten, Ljuden, Stad av gator, Gränser, Sjukhus (arbetsplats), Glömskan, Energi, Kyrkan, Fotografiet, Produktionens arkitektur, HSB, Tiotalet, Stockholms 1990-tal, Öar, De gamlas stad, Talkshow tour Göteborgs 1970-tal, Talkshow tour Malmös 1980-tal.

Sedan 2013 har Staden varit en långlivad och rikt berättad podcast som betraktar staden på ett holistiskt sätt: Dan Hallemar och Håkan Forsell vandrar, läser och lyssnar genom gator från Kiruna till Istanbul, från Los Angeles till Kairo, och kartlägger hur arkitektur, minne, arbete, tro, musik, infrastruktur och vardagsliv flätas samman i den urbana formen. Deras metod är politisk utan slagord – byggnader, arkiv, ljud och vanor behandlas som ledtrådar – så avsnitten rör sig obehindrat mellan planering och poesi, välfärdshistorier och marknadskriser, monument och marginaler. Tonen är nyfiken, exakt och generös: varje stad blir en övning i att se, där motsägelser – skönhet och våld, nostalgi och omdaning – samexisterar. Staden är helt enkelt en tålmodig skola i urban uppmärksamhet, som gör lyssnaren till en bättre läsare av platser.