Biography

Marco Allegra (BA & MA International Relations, PhD Political Science, University of Turin; MA Near and Middle Eastern Studies, University of London) is Research Professor at CES (University of Coimbra) and Long-Term Visiting Professor at the Polytechnic of Turin (225/2026); he has previously worked as teacher and researcher at the University of Turin, at CIES-Iscte, and at ICS-ULisboa. The common thread running throughout his work is the interest for the territorial and spatial dimension of politics, democracy and governance, which he has investigated through a perspective rooted in critical urban studies, phronetic political science, interpretive policy analysis, and practice theory. He has conducted investigation on Israel's settlement policy, planning conflicts, urban protest, and housing policy. Marco is co-counder and former Board members of the Portuguese National Network for Housing Studies (Rede H); co-founder and current chair of the Urban Transition Hub; and board member of the Social Movements Research Network of the Council for European Studies and of the Portuguese Association for Political Economy. His research has received funding from the FCT and the EU Commission (including two grants as PI for the projects exPERts and LOGO) as well as from several smaller grants from international institutions for the organization of scientific events - e.g. Fondation Les Treilles, Minerva Humanities Center, AESOP, DAAD. Marco is currently working on 4 main projects. The project LOGO (PI, 2023-2026) investigates the introduction of local housing plans in Portugal its impact on the governance of the sector. The project DASH (Portugal, Germany, Denmark, Serbia 2023-2026) is a collaborative project fostering cross-sectoral and cross-country exchanges on local strategies for affordable and sustainable housing. The project AirMAP (Project coordinator, 2025-2026) investigates the diffusion of Airbnb in 15 Italian cities (2017-2024). The project Arroios Rebelde (PI, since 2022) is both an investigation on urban social movements in Lisbon and a platform of community engagement between the academia and the local associations and movements of the neighbourhood of Arroios.