Dr Cecilia Dinardi

Cecilia focuses on cultural policies, creative economy, heritage, cities, urban regeneration & creative methodologies

Staff details

Dr Cecilia Dinardi

Position

Reader in Cultural Policy, Cities & Creative Industries

Department

Institute for Creative and Cultural Entrepreneurship

Email

c.dinardi (@gold.ac.uk)

Cecilia is Director of Research and Convenor of the MPhil/PhD Programme in ICCE. She also teaches in the MA in Arts Administration and Cultural Policy. Before joining Goldsmiths, she taught at City, University of London (Department of Sociology's modules: Culture and Creative Industries, Arts and Popular Culture; Researching London; Introduction to Sociology) and at the London School of Economics and Political Science (Department of Sociology's module Sociological Analysis).

Academic qualifications

  • PhD in Sociology, London School of Economics and Political Science 2013
  • MSc in Culture and Society at the LSE 2007
  • BSc in Sociology at the Universidad de Buenos Aires 2005

Teaching and supervision

Research interests

Dr Cecilia Dinardi is a sociologist interested in culture and cultural policies, cities and urban regeneration, cultural work, heritage, and creative methodologies such as ethnographic filmmaking.

She was awarded the prestigious Urban Studies Foundation Postdoctoral Research Fellowship (2013-2016) in a global competition, to conduct research into urban governance, cultural policies and creative cities in the global South, working with Professor Andy Pratt at City, University of London. She also won the Rising Star Engagement Award by the British Academy (2016-2017), with which she organised the Urban Cultural Policy & Creativity Platform, a series of engagement events bringing together international cultural policymakers, European cultural development agencies, and scholars.

Previously she was Research Officer (2009-2011) at City University, where she managed the Researching Cultural & Creative Industries in London database, making research more accessible to policy-makers, academics and service-providers.

Cecilia's research explores ways of connecting the formal domain of cultural policy making with the informal world of ordinary practices in the cultural sector. Focusing on both policy and grassroots cultural interventions in Argentina and Brazil, her work explores alternative ways of understanding culture and creativity in contexts of urban segregation, social inequality, poor-quality public spaces and growing informal settlements. She is particularly interested in understanding the social and political dimensions of the cultural economy of informal settlements.

She has been a member of the Creative Lab: Social Change through Culture & Creativity, funded by the AHRC Newton Fund, where she coordinated and participated of collaborative, interdisciplinary projects in the creative field with scholars, artists and activists from Brazil & the UK.

Grants and awards

Publications and research outputs

Edited Book

Book Section

Article

Film/Video

Professional Activity

Project

Teaching and other activities

Cecilia teaches in the MA in Arts Administration & Cultural Policy and oversees the MPhil/PhD programme as the Postdraduate Research Convenor. Before joining Goldsmiths, she taught at City, University of London (Department of Sociology's modules: Culture & Creative Industries, Arts & Popular Culture; Researching London; Introduction to Sociology) and at the London School of Economics & Political Science (Department of Sociology's module Sociological Analysis).

Dr Dinardi has also worked as a Consultant on cultural policy and research for BOP Consulting, advising governments and international organisations on cultural strategies and sustainable urban regeneration and conducting research on Latin American cities for the World Cities Culture Forum (WCCF) global initiative. She is also an Associate Researcher of the Laboratório de Antropologia da Arquitectura e Espaços (LAARES), Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, and has been a member of the NYLON international research network for three years. She has worked for the Government of the City of Buenos Aires (in the areas of tourism development and sports), coordinated pollsters teams for a range of consultancies in Argentina, including the National Census Bureau, and has been a permanent member of the Sociology of Culture Team at the Instituto de Investigaciones Gino Germani (IIGG), Universidad de Buenos Aires.

Through her PhD, MSc and BSc studies, she conducted research into three main areas: culture & city branding, culture & creative industries and culture-led urban regeneration. Her PhD thesis, under the supervision of Prof Paul Gilroy, examined the politics of culture-led urban regeneration and the various contestations over the meanings of culture and heritage, looking at the past, present & future of a monumental building in central Buenos Aires through a multi-methods engagement with its material transformation into a cultural quarter.