INTERSECT Fellows

Ana Waqar Khan is an urban planner and MEXT Embassy Scholar pursuing her graduate studies at the University of Tokyo. With a background in architecture, Ana’s research focuses on mapping spatial vulnerabilities in the context of climate change, particularly in urban environments. Her work integrates statistical analysis and GIS mapping to assess issues such as urban flooding, poor air quality, and the urban heat island effect. Ana’s thesis examines the intersection of physical hazards and socio-economic factors to identify climate-vulnerable hotspots, with the aim of developing adaptive capacity surveys and policy recommendations for resilience planning for hometown of Lahore city. Her ultimate goal is to develop a framework for assessing climate vulnerability in the urban context.

Daniela Villegas is a journalist, feminist and social researcher with a PhD in Gender and Cultural Studies from the University of Sydney. She investigates the intersection of cultural history, feminist activism, pop culture representations in the media, and gender and politics. Her latest research has focused on the construction of feminist identities from young urban working-class female activists in the periphery of Mexico City. Specifically, how identities and through them, visual activism, emerge to denounce feminicide (the murder of women because of their gender), and the fight to access abortion. Latin America, its women, and feminist movements are some of her regional areas of expertise.

Alexandra Burgos-Thorsen is a landscape architect and researcher whose design ethic centres on environmental and spatial justice. She is passionate about bridging design with community engagement and environmental research for social and ecological restoration. She practices with an ethics of care and strongly believes that healing land is directly tied to healing communities and cultivating placemaking among displaced, marginalized groups. She is practising at SLA and is an INTERSECT Fellow at the University of Copenhagen. 

Juliette Davret is a Postdoctoral researcher within the Data Stories project (Maynooth University, Ireland). She is a geographer with great value in interdisciplinary research. Her work is at the intersection of several fields, including social geography, critical data studies and digital geography. Her research focuses on the analysis of power relations in planning, in particular revealing inequalities through qualitative methods. She believes in developing new collaborations at the intersection of arts, humanities and digital technologies to reinforce stakeholders and citizen involvement in planning practices and advocate for more liveable cities.

Lila Lee-Morrison is a writer, scholar and art historian. She presently holds a position as a postdoctoral fellow at Lund University in the Dept of Sociology under the ERC-funded project, “Show and Tell: Scientific representation, algorithmically generated visualizations, and evidence across epistemic cultures.” Her research interests focus on the visual culture of machine vision, intersections of art and technology and socio-political agencies of the image.

She graduated with a PhD from Lund University in Sweden in Art History and Visual Culture studies with a published dissertation titled, Portraits of Automated Facial Recognition: On Machinic Ways of Seeing the Face (Transcript Verlag, 2019). She has been invited to give public talks internationally on subjects ranging from the intersection of art and AI and the instrumentality of contemporary art practices concerning technology. She has written for Artforum, Theory, Culture and Society and has been published by published by MIT Press, Liverpool University Press and Brill Publishing. She recently co-edited two special theme issues with Media+Environment (2023) and the Journal of Media Art Study and Theory (2022).

Nehar Mortuza has a PhD in Biochemistry and is a dynamic leader with experience in academia, pharma and entrepreneurship. As an Associate Professor at KU, she made significant contributions to the understanding of protein structure and mechanisms in cancer. At Novo Nordisk, Nehar gained invaluable experience in R&D and Project Management, leading groundbreaking drug development initiatives. A passionate entrepreneur, she co-founded therapeutic startups, successfully securing investments, and held a prestigious residency with Antler. As the co-founder and host of Life Science Talent Talks, Nehar continues to inspire the scientific community. Her interest crosses borders and finds space in intersectionality, We are delighted to welcome her as an INTERSECT Fellow, where she will curate and host the INTERSECT Podcast.

Sean Yuxiang Li, MAA, is an architect and researcher, with an MA in Political Architecture from the Royal Danish Academy. He works with queer theory and otherness in architecture and has a strong interest in how spatial practice manifests intersectionality and political yet societal changes. His recent works disentangled the arena where urban history, the squatter movement in Copenhagen, engaging the untold history, shed light on the idea of the right to the city. His focus has been presented through publications and events while providing a platform to allow different voices to be heard. He has worked with several NGOs and volunteer works, Architects Without Borders, Emergency Architecture And Human Rights, Caritas, diversity platform for Akademisk Arkitektforeningen. He strongly believes that space and architecture can be the catalyst for change.