About Me
I am a human geographer who has a research interest in a range of urban and environmental issues, including areas relating to social housing, disaster management, and water governance. My main research interest is in the subterranean: what lies beneath surface – in the form of minerals, aquifers, urban undergrounds – and how these underground worlds are imagined, exploited, contested, regulated and materialised. I pursue this interest in my current position as an Associate Professor in Human Geography at the School of Humanities and Languages, University of New South Wales, building upon teaching and research positions that I have previous held at a variety of universities across Australia (i.e., University of Melbourne, University of the Sunshine Coast, Macquarie University, the University of Sydney and the Australian Catholic University).
I am originally from central Mexico - born in Mexico City and growing up in the nearby urban centre of Puebla - where I complete my first two degrees: a BA (hons) in Cultural Anthropology at the Universidad de Las Américas Puebla, and an MA in Urban Studies and the Environment at El Colegio de México. I then moved to the United Kingdom to complete my PhD in Human Geography at Kings College London, which included an extended fieldwork component in the Yucatan Peninsula in the south-east of Mexico, where I researched the governance of the regions subterraean aquifer. In 2010, I moved to Australia, living Melbourne, the Sunshine Coast and now, Sydney.
Feel free to contact me via email: marilu.melo@unsw.edu.au, or follow me via Twitter: @marilumelozurit.