Dr Matina Kapsali is an urban geographer and planner. She is currently working as a Postdoctoral Researcher (State Scholarships Foundation Fellow), exploring the private management of public space in Athens during the ongoing crisis (2020-2022). She is also an Adjunct Lecturer in the School of Architecture of the University of Ioannina (academic year 2020-2021).
She studied Architecture in AUTh and she holds an MSC on Global Urban Development and Planning from the University of Manchester. In 2019, she completed her PhD with Distinction in the School of Architecture, AUTh as a State Scholarships Foundation Fellow. Her thesis was entitled “The politics of urban commons: Participatory urbanism in Thessaloniki during the 2010 crisis”.
She has a rich research experience in multiple institutions across Europe (University of Vienna. Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, University of Manchester). She also has a wide range of teaching experiences, in the fields of architecture, urban and spatial planning and urban geography in various Greek universities as well as the Technical University of Vienna (Austria). She has published in international peer-reviewed journals and has participated in several international conferences.
Knowledge field: urban planning, participatory planning, contemporary urban transformations, public space, urban geography
Research interests: urban commons, public space, urban political movements, urban development and planning, housing
Publications (selection)
Kapsali, M. (2020) Political infrastructures of care: collective home making in refugee solidarity squats, Radical Housing Journal, 2(2), pp. 13-34
Karaliotas, L. & Kapsali, M. (2020) Equals in solidarity: Orfanotrofio’s housing squat as a site for political subjectification across differences amid the “Greek crisis”. Antipode, doi: https://doi.org/10.1111/anti.12653
Kapsali, M. & Karagianni, M. (2018) Urban Resilience and “Co-creation” of Public Spaces: Thessaloniki’s New Waterfront as a contested terrain, Geographies, Vol 32, pp. 57-69 (in Greek)
Athanassiou, E., Christodoulou, C., Kapsali, M., Karagianni, M. (2018) Hybridising ownership of public space: Framings of urban emancipation in crisis-ridden Thessaloniki, In: Knierbein, S. & Viderman, T. (eds) Public Space Unbound. Urban emancipation and the post-political condition. Routledge, London. pp. 251-266
Kapsali M. & Karagianni M. (2017), Book review "Common Space: The City as Commons" by Stavros Stavrides, Urban Studies. Vol. 54(11) DOI: 10.1177/0042098017713556, p. 2674-2677
Kapsali, M. & Karagianni, M. (2016) A new socio-spatial order in crisis-stricken Greece: the housing crisis and the (in)visibility of the new marginals. In: B.Schönig, S.Schipper (eds) Urban Austerity: Impacts of the Global Financial Crisis on Cities in Europe. Theater de Zeit, Berlin. pp. 161-175
Kapsali, M. & Tsavdaroglou, C. (2016) The battle for the common space, from the neoliberal creative city to the rebel city and vice versa: the cases of Athens, Istanbul, Thessaloniki, Izmir. In: Springer, S., White, R. J. & Souza, M. L. d. (eds.) Transgressing Frontiers: Anarchism, Geography, and the Spirit of Revolt, Rowman & Littlefield, London. pp. 153-184
