Maria Rodó de Zárate, postdoctoral researcher of Gender and ICT, presented the communication “Homes, bodies and (dis)comforts: conceptualizing the Right to the City from a feminist intersectional perspective” in the Royal Geographical Society Annual International Conference 2016, which took place in London from 30 August to 2 September.

Based on a research on the access to public space of young people in the Mediterranean city of Manresa (Catalonia), Rodó de Zárate showed three different aspects that should be considered in the conceptualization of the Right to the City from a feminist perspective in order not to exclude certain social groups: the right to private space within the cities, as they are also made of private homes; the right to the own body as a basic condition for the access to specific spaces, because the control over gendered and sexualized bodies conditions the activities and participation in public spaces; and the emotions associated to the experience of urban spaces, taking into account the right to feel comfortable as part of the Right to the City.

During the Conference, Maria Rodó de Zárate also chaired the session “Feminist Struggles in Shifting Geopolitics”, together with Dilar Dirik (University of Cambridge). This session tackled the feminist proposals that are being developed in processes of shifting geopolitics all over the world, taking the Kurdish women’s movement as a nowadays example.