[+] Dr. Gonzalo Lizarralde (principal investigator)
Gonzalo Lizarralde 's work focuses on understanding project processes, risks, low-cost housing, and informality in urban settings. He is interested in the causes and consequences of rapid urban transformation triggered by natural disasters, climate change, socio-political conflicts, and economic instability. His research has impacted housing and urban policy in Haiti, Cuba, Chile, Colombia and other countries of the Global South. In 2013, Gonzalo launched a series of graduate courses, studios and online debates focused on the study of ethics in the fields of architecture, urban planning, and other design professions. Since 2017, he is the holder of the Université de Montréal Fayolle-Magil Construction Research Chair in Architecture, the Built Environment and Sustainability. He is also the director of the IF Research Group (grif) and the Canadian Disaster Resilience and Sustainable Reconstruction Research Alliance (Oeuvre durable). He is one of the founders of i-Rec, an international network of specialists in disaster risk reduction and post-disaster reconstruction. He has led, or participated in, research projects with an overall budget of over five million Canadian dollars. In 2016, his latest book, The Invisible Houses, received the Housing Design Education Award (Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture and the American Institute of Architects). That year, Gonzalo was accepted as a Member of the College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists of the Royal Society of Canada, the country’s most important recognition of emerging intellectual leadership. E-mail and website

[+] Dr. Lisa Bornstein (co researcher)
Lisa Bornstein is an expert in international planning, economic development, environmental policy and planning, and institutions and governance. She explores the role of institutions and decision-making processes in public debates and consultations. She has vast experience in research and consultation in urban planning, and in analysis of policy interventions in Latin America and Africa. She has actively participated in several projects of the Groupe Interuniversitaire de Montréal (GIM) and coordinates the relationships between this network and Œuvre Durable. Lisa Bornstein has recognized expertise on citizen participation in development. She has published important contributions in journals such as Public Administration and Development and Contemporary African Studies and Development. She supervises several Master and Doctorate students doing research on post-disaster and post-conflict vulnerability and reconstruction. She managed an important project funded by the SSHRC, which included 13 partners. Dr. Bornstein holds a Ph.D. from University of California at Berkeley; her Ph.D. dissertation is titled “Flexible Production in the Unstable State: Employment, Linkages, and the Brazilian Information Technology Industry”. Email and Website

[+] Dr. Kevin Gould (collaborator)
Dr. Kevin Gould's research explores the politics of environmental and economic policy-making in the Americas. He is particularly interested in policies authorized by technical knowledge, and his current research examines how military experts framed development projects during the Cold War in ways that favored elites and reified exclusionary visions of race, nation, and nature. Building on new economic geography and political ecology literature, Dr. Gould's work investigates the politics of market-assisted land reform, post-disaster reconstruction, and Cold War infrastructure development. Through his research, he seeks to challenge the often violent transnational processes and epistemologies that connect Canada, the United States and Guatemala. Before arriving at Concordia University, Dr. Gould received his Ph.D. in Human Geography from the University of British Columbia (2009) and spent one year as a research fellow at Dartmouth College. Email  and website

[+] Dr. Danielle Labbé (co researcher)
Danielle Labbé completed her PhD at the School of Community and Regional Planning (University of British Columbia). She is currently an Assistant Professor at the Institut d’Urbanisme (Université de Montréal), where she is also affiliated to the Centre d’études de l’Asie de l’Est (CETASE). Danielle's research is focused on the inter-relations between the production and appropriation of urban space in Vietnam. Her work uses a combination of historical, process-oriented, and social agency perspectives to explore the encounters between state intentions, governing practices, and everyday life during the urbanization process. Through this approach, Danielle’s research shows that, although taking place during the “global era,” the ongoing urban transition in Vietnam remains deeply rooted in local circumstances. Placed in a comparative context, her research on this Southeast Asian country contributes to larger theoretical debates about state-society relations, urban governance, and regulatory informality in the fields of urban planning, human geography, and urban anthropology. Email  and website

[+] Dr. Isabelle Thomas (co researcher)
Isabelle Thomas is a full professor at the Université de Montréal. She did her Ph.D. at the Sorbonne, Paris 4 on the theme of urban sprawl and the restructuring of brownfields in Ohio cities. The "Eugène Gallois" Prize was awarded to her book: Maret I. (2004). Étalement urbain et friches industrielles, revers de l'idéal américain, Paris, l'Harmattan, (220 pp), June 28, 2004 by La Société de Géographie. Paris. His work is in line with research focused on sustainable urban planning, sustainable environmental planning, and issues of vulnerability and adaptation to climate change in order to build resilient communities in the face of natural and anthropogenic risks. Email and Website

[+] Dr. Christopher Bryant (co researcher)
Christopher Bryant is an internationally recognized leader on rural and small town research and on periurban agriculture planning and management. He is also one of Canada's leaders in the fields of strategic planning and management, sustainable community development, including building community resilience to deal with climate change, and adaptation of human activity to climate change. He has been in charge of, and has participated in, numerous research projects and grants such as the “Programme ARUC – Enjeux environnementaux” 2008-2009 (CRSH), “Gestion intégrée et changement climatique de l’estuaire et du Golfe du Saint-Laurent » (2010-2014), and the ARUC project “Resilience of the coastal communities facing climatic changes” (2013). Email  and Website

[+] Dr. Nalini Mohabir (co researcher)
Nalini Mohabir is an assistant professor in the department of Geography, Planning, and Environment at Concordia University. She writes, researches, and teaches in the fields of feminist and postcolonial migration geographies, and is interested in gender and racial justice, as well as flows of power and social change. She has published articles in Small Axe, Habitat International, Caribbean Review of Gender Studies, and Interventions, and is co-editing a book entitled: Montreal, 1969 and Transnational Black Radicalism: The Sir George Williams Affair Remembered. Email  and Website

[+] Dr. Benjamin Herazo (Guest Member)
Benjamin Herazo is the ADAPTO Research Project Coordinator (Climate Change Adaptation in Informal Settings)at IF Research Group. He completed his PhD studies at the Université de Montréal’s Faculty of Environmental Design. He holds a bachelor's degree in Architecture and a master's degree in Economics. He was Associate Professor, Director and Dean of the Universidad Javeriana’s Faculty of Environmental Studies for fifteen years. He has experience in architectural practices and as a consultant and researcher in environmental management. His doctoral thesis project focused on the way sustainable development contributes to the alignment between strategic and tactical management in construction. Email

[+] Dr. David Smith (Guest member)
David Smith is an architect and a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Montréal’s School of Architecture. His research interests are located in the intersections between the built environment and food security, livelihoods, disaster risk reduction and collaborative governance. He holds a master’s in architecture from Laval University in Canada and a master’s in development and emergency practice from Oxford Brookes University in the United Kingdom. David was an assistant professor and completed his PhD at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in Norway. His doctoral thesis is titled ‘Marketplaces as critical urban infrastructure: relational attributes and disaster resilience from the perspectives of traders and customers in Port-au-Prince, Haiti’. Email.

[+] Dr. Tapan Dhar (Guest member)
Tapan Dhar is a postdoctoral researcher in the School of Planning at McGill University. His research includes human dimensions of climate change adaptation, urban design and place making, sustainable urban settlements, urban resilience, landscape ecological urbanism, and participatory planning and design. He completed his PhD with an outstanding achievement award at the University of Waterloo, Ontario. He is a contributing author of the chapter Settlements and Key infrastructure of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Working Group II Sixth Assessment Report. Email. Doctoral thesis project.

www.grif.umontreal.ca/observatoire